On Sunday, 9 June, the Sustainable Oceans Leadership Institute (SOLI) program will be hosting a preview workshop in Bangkok, Thailand, just before the kickoff of the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, produced by Diversified Communications in partnership with SeaWeb.
Those who participate in the workshop will spend the day visiting seafood production facilities in the region and exploring how climate change is effecting the industry and local community. Among the producers to be visited is an eco-friendly shrimp farm, which workshop attendees will get to via motorized canoe. The workshop will also examine shrimp trawlers in port, and fishermen unloading trash fish, according to the SOLI website. A tour of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center is on the agenda as well.
Global Seafood Assurances (GSA), a not-for-profit organization with the mission of creating access to end-to-end assurance for all seafood, will officially launch the SOLI program in 2020 in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. during next year’s Seafood Expo North America event. The program seeks to “Create a network of global leaders from across regions and sectors to address ocean issues in a precompetitive manner through results-oriented education and collaboration,” the organization said in its launch announcement in February 2019.
The core of SOLI consists of four 2.5-day workshops linked to global conferences. The sessions “will combine classroom learning to provide a firm grounding in climate change science with local field trips to see how businesses and governments are taking action to address climate change,” said GSA, which listed the following takeaways SOLI participants can glean from the program:
- Building relationships and working collaboratively with 25 industry, NGO, and government leaders from around the world who are grappling with how to lead on climate change.
- Getting hands-on experience developing and implementing practical climate change solutions via a capstone project.
- Receiving full access to materials created for future years of the program, deepening knowledge of climate change and other critical ocean issues.
The cost of the workshop in Bangkok is USD 199 (EUR 178), which includes all meals and transportation for the day. Another SOLI preview workshop will also be hosted in Chennai, India, during the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s GOAL conference taking place 21 to 24 October, 2019. This later workshop will last for a day and a half and take place at the Leela Palace.
