Regional Scientific and Technical Capacity Building Workshop on the World Ocean Assessment
In large marine regions, undertaking integrated assessments can be expensive and time consuming, but sound information is critical to understanding the state of the marine environment and achieving or maintaining ocean health. Most importantly, such large scale and integrated assessments must not be overly influenced by information that is limited only to either places or issues that are well studied, since this might result in outcomes that are not balanced or properly represent conditions across the whole of a region.
The purpose of the workshop held in Bangkok (17-19 September, 2012), was to build capacity to undertake regional integrated marine assessments. A previous workshop, to support the United Nations World Ocean Assessment, held in Sanya City, China, identified a regional capacity gap in this area.
Bangkok, Thailand 17–19 September 2012
Workshop report: South China Sea
Report prepared by Dr. Trevor Ward, Workshop Moderator, University of Technology, Sydney; and Green-ward Consulting, Perth, Australia
Organising Group: Dr. Ellik Adler, UNEP/COBSEA, Dr. Elaine Baker, GRID Arendal, Dr. Peter Harris, Geoscience Australia, Dr. Alexander Tkalin, UNEP/NOWPAP, Mr. Wenxi Zhu, UNESCO/IOC/WESTPAC