The Ocean Data Action Coalition
Anchored in the private sector, the Ocean Data Action Coalition will enable bridges between ongoing multilateral programs within the framework of the UN Decade for Ocean Science, panel countries and key players in business and industry to unlock and share ocean data.
The Coalition will comply with the broad mandate given by the high-level panel recommendations on ocean data.
HUB Ocean, Microsoft and Accenture are leading the Ocean Data Action Coalition. The vision is a globally shared data revolution that will contribute to sustainable ocean management worldwide.
Building a sustainable ocean economy is one of the most important tasks and greatest opportunities of our time. Data liberated, safeguarded, and made available by the Ocean Data Action Coalition is essential in realizing all the priority actions outlined by the heads of state in The High-Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy (Ocean Panel). This will only be realized if the private sector, governments and researchers join forces.
Background
The Ocean Data Action Coalition is an initiative from The High-Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy (Ocean Panel), which consists of 19 countries. Together, the members control more than 50 per cent of the world’s coastlines and 45 per cent of the world’s exclusive economic zones (EEZs). The Ocean Panel’s goal is to build momentum towards the management of 100 per cent of the ocean, ensuring the health and wealth of our ocean for future generations.
Therefore, the Ocean Panel has put forward ambitious plans and initiatives to protect our ocean. Among these is the establishment of the Ocean Data Action Coalition (ODAC).
In December 2020, HUB Ocean (then C4IR Ocean) responded to the call from the High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy to take on the leadership of the ODAC, in collaboration with Microsoft Corporation. In 2024, Accenture joined ODAC.
At Ocean Data Action Day 2024 in Oslo, Accenture formally joined the ODAC
Challenges
To make the Ocean Panel’s vision a reality, we will strive to:
1. Build solutions to overcome technological and human barriers to ocean data sharing.
Despite broad intentions to share ocean data, much data remains locked away in silos - sitting on computers, in national ocean data centres, and in publicly available but difficult-to-access online data repositories.
2. Advance industry sustainability through new business models that include ocean data sharing
To date, a vast majority of ocean data collection has been funded and managed by public sources. To make these data widely available, best practices for open data sharing have evolved. While the success of the open data movement is undeniable, so too is the fact that a tremendous amount of data is not open and much remains not easily accessible.
3. Cultivate the regulatory and policy incentives for ocean data sharing
Frequently, data sharing is inhibited or prohibited by governance, regulation, and policies. Similarly, many new and existing regulations and policies regarding ocean management require ocean data but do not mandate or incentivize such sharing.
Status
ODAC is active in participating in COPs, organizing and inviting to informal roundtables and other events. In 2024, we invited to the Ocean Data Action Day - a 360 degree perspective on Industrial Ocean Data Sharing. In parallel, ODAC encourages companies to make real commitments to ocean data sharing. ODAC also published the report “Tides of Transparency: A First Global Mapping of Industrial Ocean Data Sharing “, focusing on biodiversity data.