Public Lecture by Rashid Sumaila

How to achieve a sustainable blue economy

A public lecture by Professor Rashid Sumaila, Director, Fisheries Economics Research Unit, University of British Columbia and UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

A crucial question still facing humanity is how to successfully manage the ocean to ensure long term sustainability. In this lecture Professor Sumaila will explore this question couched around three key issues, ie, how we tackle global warming and climate change; how we implement public policies such as the provision of government subsidies to the fisheries sector; and how we manage the high seas.

Professor Sumaila will argue that the chance of managing our ocean successfully for people and nature depends strongly on our ability to tackle the issues that affect the conservation and fair sharing of benefits from our ocean in such a way that positive feedbacks are transmitted between the two. The alternative is for negative feedbacks from conservation to people, and vice versa, to the detriment of both people and nature.

Professor Rashid Sumaila, Director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the University of British Columbia is a globally recognized fisheries economist, with over 230 peer-reviewed publications, and over 60 books or book chapters. He has a Google Scholar h-index of 70 with over 20,000 citations. Rashid specializes in bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing and the economics of high and deep seas fisheries. Professor Sumaila has experience working in fisheries and natural resource projects in Norway, Canada and the North Atlantic region, Namibia and the Southern African region, Ghana and the West African region and Hong Kong and the South China Sea.

Professor Sumaila is a UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow and a UWA Forrest Visiting Fellow.