17/05/2023 | From 26 to 30 June, the "People & The Sea" conference of the Centre for Maritime Research MARE will take place at the University of Amsterdam – this year with the overall topic "Blue Fear - Navigating ecological, social and existential anxieties during the Anthropocene". You can still register to take part on site until 1 June. For online participation online, you have until 19 June to register.
The conference will look at the issue of "blue fear" from different perspectives. Blue Fear is not only about abstract planetary boundaries and realities of the Anthropocene. It is affecting the lives of coastal and island habitants all over the world, the people whose livelihoods and identities are intertwined with the coast and the sea for centuries. And it is not only nature that is causing them worry. The human face of the coast is changing rapidly. New industries are materializing and claiming space: tourism, aquaculture, ocean energy, marine biotechnology, and mineral exploration, amongst others. But Blue Fear does not only pose challenges, it also opens opportunities for invention and transformation: new patterns of livelihood, new technologies, new forms of collaboration, new legal arrangements. New hopes and motivation to engage, connect, and mobilize. It also leads to novel academic quests for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge, and new impetus for marine social science.
This conference takes Blue Fear as its starting point and invites us to look it in the face. It explores current opportunities and threats in the era of climate and anthropogenic change. How does Blue Fear manifest itself? Who does it belong to and what does it trigger? Where does it take us?
The MARE consortium includes six institutional partners in five European countries - including the ZMT. The MARE conference People & The Sea is organised every two years by MARE members. Prof. Dr. Marie Fujitani (WG Deliberation, Valuation and Sustainability) and Prof. Dr. Achim Schlüter (WG Institutions and Behavioural Economics) were involved in this year's event.
Further information on the conference, programme and registration: https://marecentre.nl/
More on MARE: https://marecentre.nl/who-we-are/
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