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Contributing Policy Analysis to Ocean Nexus: A Primer on Our Approach

“Policy analysis may also be simply defined as a way for public actors to make informed decisions about solving problems.”

Dr. Grant Blume

Inclusive Ocean Data For Decision-Making

“No data practice can fully escape the pull of non-innocent relations — the embeddedness in racial capitalism and colonialism — that shape data.”

Lourdes Vera et al.

A Review of Gender Studies and Feminist Theory in and for Marine Social Science

“Considering gender as a relation and not as a category is essential here to engage in such intersectional inquiry.”

Dr. Annet Pauwelussen

Ocean Equity

Grounded by meticulous research, Ocean Nexus Special Reports dissect and analyze the complexities of ocean equity topics through the lens of gender, race, and decolonization. Ocean Nexus Special Reports also house data repositories published in tandem with other publications.

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Gender

Race

Decolonization

Data

Analysis of Strategies for Mitigating PNA Revenue Loss from Tuna Migration Under Climate Change: An Equity-focused Perspective

Ocean Governance, Law, and Policy | 2023

Climate change is shifting tuna stocks eastward, threatening a key revenue source for Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS), particularly the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), raising urgent climate justice concerns. This brief evaluates three response strategies—global emissions reductions, fisheries governance reform, and climate litigation—through an equity lens (distributional, procedural, intergenerational). It finds that no single strategy is sufficient; instead, a combined, coordinated approach is needed, despite embedded political and equity challenges within each pathway.

Yulan Kim
Angela Abolhassani
Rebeca de Buen Kalman
Yoshitaka Ota
Grant Blume

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Ocean Knowledge and Governance Capacity Changes and Trends

Ocean Governance, Law, and Policy | DEC 2025

The Ocean Nexus Interim Report highlights alarming reductions in ocean governance and science capacity across the United States, amidst compounding global crises—climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and social inequity. The report warns of an “epistemicide,” the systematic dismantling of ocean-related knowledge infrastructure and governance capacity, with long-term consequences for communities and ecosystems.

Report available in English and Japanese.

Anna Zivian, PhD
Yoshitaka Ota, PhD
Richard Okelola
Sophie Kissimba Kassini
Luciana Bueno
Cinda Scott, PhD
Ricardo de Ycaza, PhD

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A Policy Analysis for Climate Adaptation in Japanese Fisheries

Climate Adaptation | AUG 2025

This report examines climate change adaptation strategies for Japan’s offshore, coastal, and aquaculture fisheries through an equity-centered lens. It analyzes key policy trade-offs and offers recommendations to strengthen support for vulnerable fishers and farmers, advance environmental justice, and promote sustainable, climate-resilient fisheries across Japan’s diverse coastal communities.

Yoshitaka Ota, Ph.D.
Yulan Kim, Ph.D.
Yuto Furuzono
Shingo Hamada, Ph.D.
Yumeng Pang, Ph.D.

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A Policy Analysis for Nova Scotia Lobster Fishers in Response to COVID-19

Ocean Governance, Law, and Policy | AUG 2025

This report analyzes policy options to address the economic vulnerability of Nova Scotia lobster fishers to acute shocks, using COVID-19 as a case study. It evaluates trade-offs across four policy options—cash transfers, loans, price guarantees, and public marketing —highlighting equity and effectiveness considerations to inform more resilient, responsive fisheries policy in Canada.

Yulan Kim, PhD
Rebeca De Buen Kalman, PhD

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A Scoping Review of Ocean Equity in Ocean Governance Literature

Ocean Governance, Law, and Policy | June 2025

This report serves as a data repository for a larger project motivated by concerns that a lack of identification of, and reflection upon, the underlying themes that shape discussions of ocean equity across contemporary ocean governance literature may lead to a lack of modernization of understandings and applications of an inherently critical and anti-hegemonic concept.

Abigael Kim

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Research Brief on Just Transition (Ocean Nexus Group)

Climate Adaptation | AUG 2024

This report describes the conditions necessary to ensure a just transition to offshore wind. Insights were obtained from researchers at Ocean Nexus through discussions with Mark Nepf. Broadly, these conversations asked interviewees what needs to be prioritized when implementing offshore wind equitably.

Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor
Brian OʼNeill
Matthew Schneider
Corey Ridings
Kurt Ellison
M. Nasir Tighsazzadeh
Reuben Martinez
Shana Hirsch
William Kammin
Leah Fusco
Mark Nepf

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Ocean Equity and Plastics Governance: International and U.S. Perspectives

Ocean Governance, Law, and Policy | AUG 2024

Report on the role of equity in plastics governance at the international and U.S. levels. 
Topics include: (1) the role of equity in the plastics treaty negotiations, (2) the application of ocean justice principles to avoid disproportionate burdens in the Global South and vulnerable communities, and (3) the implementation of front-end and back-end accountability mechanisms to respond to plastics pollution such as reducing production and imposing extended producer responsibility (EPR) mechanisms.

Prakriti Shah
Randall S. Abate

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Challenges and Opportunities to Uphold Food Sovereignty for U.S. Tribes

Legal and Policy Research | AUG 2024

This report includes background on food sovereignty generally and for Indigenous communities, comparative case studies on tribes in Washington and Alaska, and two court cases describing how legal decisions will affect tribal food sovereignty.

Chloe Nguyen
Randall S. Abate

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Scoping Report on High Seas Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and the BBNJ Treaty

DECOLONIZATION | FEB 2024

In the shadow of the BBNJ negotiations and dawn of the new regime, the present period offers a unique opportunity to evaluate the finalised text ahead of its animation by individual state actors. Of particular interest are provisions for MPAs, which are widely perceived as the preferred method of achieving ambitious biodiversity and sustainable development goals. To evaluate the BBNJ’s contribution towards potential high sea MPAs, it is first worth establishing an understanding of the existing governance framework for MPAs. Such a study will lay the foundation for a future comprehensive assessment of the finalised treaty text and substantiate hypotheses regarding the BBNJ’s ability to affect successful environmental management on the High Seas.

Jade Jones

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Inclusive Ocean Data For Decision-Making

Decolonization | JUNE 2023

Inclusive Ocean Data for Decision-Making prioritizes dynamics, rather than single decisions, within decision-making processes. This guidebook can be used to guide a thinking process through which communities can identify and address systemic issues and inequitable impacts relevant to themselves.

Araba Sey
Chris Rothschild


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Contributing Policy Analysis to Ocean Nexus: A Primer on Our Approach

Decolonization | SEP 2023

By positioning policy analysis as a critical link that connects scholarly research to the political and administrative decision-making processes that create public policy, this manuscript provides an overview of the policy analysis process to the Ocean Nexus scholars, researchers, and analysts who work collaboratively on the pressing problems facing the world’s oceans.

Grant Blume

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A Review of Gender Studies and Feminist Theory in and for Marine Social Science

GENDER | NOV 2023

Marine social science has seen an increase in attention for gender issues over the last decades, particularly in fisheries-related studies. What remains underexplored are broader questions of how dominant systems of thinking and governing human-sea relations in science, policy and society are gendered, and how feminist theory can help tackle structural gendered inequities.

Annet Pauwelussen
Sallie Lau

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