Session 1: Collaborating across Sectors, Disciplines, and Scales

This session will provide the opportunity for all participants to get to know each other and to review the cross-scale, cross-sector, and cross-discipline nature of the challenges marine debris pose to the ocean and humanity, as well as the processes that fuel the increasing in marine debris over time.

As an assignment to prepare for the introduction, each participant is asked prepare a "personal" presentation following the template for the three slides available in the Workspace. The personal presentations have to be uploaded in the Workspace under "Workshop Contributions."

We allocate only 2 minutes per participant to present your slides!

After the individual introductions, there will be two keynotes with the first one given an overview of the challenge and the potentially global catastrophic risk marine debris poses to humanity and the Earth life-support system and the second one providing a summary of the ongoing activities to provide use-ready knowledge to society.

Session 2: The Case Study “Reducing Plastics in the Ocean within a Growing Global Economy: Understanding the Information Needs to Support Interventions”

This session will present the outcomes of case study and identify the remaining work to be done.

Session 3: Participatory Modelling as Part of the Case Study

The session will engage the workshop participants in a participatory modeling for the case study with main focus on the challenge of connecting data and derived knowledge to actions. The conceptual model available in the case study as well as the more advanced causal loop diagram and/or stock and flow model will provide a starting point for the participatory effort.

Session 4: Participatory Effort on Information Needs

The session will utilize the models resulting from the previous session to identify observations, information and knowledge that are needed to inform policy making and designing action to address the challenge of marin debris. The indicators agreed upon in various international programs will provide guidance for this dialogue.

Session 5: Listening Session: Stakeholders and Their Knowledge Needs

A range of stakeholders engaged in policy making and planning of actions to reduce the risk of marine debris entering the ocean and reducing marine debris in the ocean will communicate their knowledge needs that could be met by indicators.

Session 6: Linking Data and Knowledge to Actions

In this session, knowledge needs related to policy making addressing the challenge of marine debris will be introduced in two keynotes. After that, a participatory effort will be made to develop a vision for the initiative.

Session 7: The Role of GEO and GEO Blue Planet in Facilitating Observations

The session will focus on the implementaion of IMDOS and the role GEO and Blue Planet can take in this initiative. Contributions from other groups and organizations will be considered. A focus will be on how to harmonize observations, develop standards and best practices, and engage a global community of citizen scientists in the observations.

Session 8: Progressing the Roadmap

The road map will be reviewed and revised based on input from the participants. The session will conclude with a summary of the next steps and subsequent events.