Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute (UCI) Director Tony MacDonald attended the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice, France, from June 9-13. UNOC 2025 brought together over 15,000 diverse stakeholders from governments, UN agencies, international NGOs, civil society and the private sector to discuss ways to accelerate action to conserve and sustainably use the ocean. In addition to representing the UCI, MacDonald attended in his role as chair of the National Academy of Science Ocean Studies Board’s U.S. Decade Committee for Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and as a Global Ocean Forum (GOF) board member.
MacDonald served as a panelist in the conference session “Bridging Science, Policy and Action: Enhancing Cross-Sectoral Collaboration for Inclusive and Equitable Ocean Management and Governance.” MacDonald’s remarks addressed how regional ocean management efforts supported by UCI, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) and Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal could be used as a model for other countries and leveraged to advance cross-sectoral conservation and sustainable use and of marine biodiversity under the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) treaty.
The panel was moderated by María José González-Bernat, Ph.D., co-director of the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) Ecosystems Program, and Peter Ricketts, Ph.D., former president and vice-chancellor of Acadia University (Canada) and GOF Board member. Other panelists included:
- H.E Ambassador Julio Cordano, director of environment, climate change and oceans, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile
- H.E. Ambassador Viliami Va’inga Tone, permanent representative of the Kingdom of Tonga to the U.N.
- Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf, former minister of education, culture and science of the Netherlands
- Peter Haugan, policy director at Institute of Marine Research, Norway
- Lynne Shannon, principal researcher leading the Marine Sustainability group in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town
- Professor Jean-Christophe Martin, University Cote d’Azur
- Professor María Fernanda Morales Camacho, Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica
- Louise Lieberknecht, senior expert in marine sustainability, GRID-Arendal
- Jasmine Nyagah, University of Nairobi, Kenya
Among the many ocean colleagues at UNOC 2025, MacDonald had the privilege of running into 2015 UCI National Champion of the Champion honoree and ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, Ph.D., and Kate Killerlain Morrison, former MARCO executive director and current managing director of Earle’s conservation organization, Mission Blue.
For more information on UNOC 2025 and its outcomes, click here.