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Background

The Center for the Blue Economy commonly referred to as CBE, is a research center that is managed by  Middlebury Institute of International Studies located in Monterey, California. The CBE focuses on ocean and coastal research. The Center for the Blue Economy was founded in year 2011. It received the initial fund of $1 million from the Middlebury College parents Robin and Deborah Hicks in their capacities as trustees of the Loker Foundation (reference). Professor Jason Scorse, who is also the Head/Chair of International Environmental Policy (IEP) program at MIIS is the Director of Center of Blue Economy. The CBE was created to address the issues related to “Blue Economy’ in the ocean and coastal areas.

Research Focus

The research at the Center for the Blue Economy mainly focuses on determining the factors that ensures sustainability and economics of oceans and coastal regions. The research at the center provides open-access data to different stakeholders including businesses, governments, nonprofits that could help them to make decisions for managing ocean and coastal resources. The research also focuses on climate change adaptation in coastal areas, governing the environmental issues and providing possible solutions considering the ocean and coastal issues. The center has collaboration with various local and national organizations and working on wide range of topics related to ocean and coastal areas. The center also offers specialization course of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (OCRM) for the IEP program.

Notable achievements:

The CBE research projects focuses on wide range of issues and have significant impacts on differents levels:


 * Local level: The CBE was one of the first research to highlight the negative impacts of sand mining by CEMEX (hyperlink) which resulted in huge sand erosions in the Monterey Bay beaches. Based on the findings of CBE, the California Coastal Commission gave CEMEX sand mine three years to close their sand extraction in the bay. The CBE played a major role to end this long battle to closing down the last coastal sand mine in the United States (reference).
 * State Level: The CBE designed a new process to select the best suitable coastal adaptation strategies, which include community risk assessment and CBA (Cost-Benefit Analysis) to reduce the Coastal erosion in California (reference).
 * National Level: The CBE alongside with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (hyperlink) is working on creating official Ocean Satellite Account with the U.S. government, which is considered  as an (reference) important step to recognize the value of our oceans and coasts.
 * International Level: The CBE in 2015, hosted the first ‘Oceans in International Income Accounts’ Symposium. It was one of its kind to start global conversation about how to measure the Blue Economy worldwide. In 2018, CBE started to work with Bangladesh and the 21 nations of the Indian Ocean Rim Association to assist those countries to measure their Blue Economies (hyperlink).

CBE ADVISORY COUNCIL

The CBE Advisory Council have experts from different backgrounds and versatile experiences including marine science, policy and business. The team aims to make a change and shape the future of blue economy. The organogram of CBE Advisory Council is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Organogram of CBE Advisory Council

Grants and Funding:

The CBE 2018 receives grants came from three major sources:71% federal government, 28% state and local agencies, and 1% from other sources (see Table 1).

Table.1: Sponsors of CBE listed from highest contributor to lowest. (Source/References)

Summer Fellowship

Center for the Blue Economy also offers Summer Fellowships for the students. The fellowship positions or the summer fellows are engaged in number of ocean and coastal resource management projects. The fellows receive grants to work on topics as wide as deep sea conservation research, climate resilience, community-based resource management, sustainable financing, blue growth, fisheries management, coastal adaptation, community education, and gender equity. (reference)

Speaker Series

The Center for Blue Economy hosts the Speakers Series which are events where professionals from different background share their knowledge with students and community members. There are two different kinds of Speakers Series: The Sustainability Speakers Series and the CBE Speakers Series. The Sustainability Speakers Series are administered by the Center for Blue Economy and is funded by the Hayward Family Foundation (of local company Hayward Lumber). The Sustainability Speakers series include a broad range of topics like oceans, atmosphere, social justice, etc. The Sustainability Speaker Series are open to the Public and they are free.

The CBE Speaker Series (also known as OCRM Speaker Series), are part of the class requirements for students seeking the Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (OCRM) concentration and are also open to students in other concentrations and the public. The CBE Speakers Series are funded the Center for Blue Economy and include a variety of topics related to ocean and coastal management. The main objective of CBE Speaker Series is to bring a variety of possible career tracks and contacts to the students.

Guests at the Speakers Series include Ambassador David Balton and IEP alumni Clessi Bennet. The CBE has been organizing both the Speakers Series since 2011.

Publications:

The CBE has its own peer-reviewed journal titled ‘Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics’ (JOCE) that publishes research articles, and reports to provide a understanding of the economic impacts and importance of ocean and coastal resources. In addition to that JOCE review articles on the effects of human on ocean and coastal areas. So far JOCE has published around 57 research articles focusing on ocean and coastal issues (reference).

References