Progressing Ocean Conservation – ReThink 2021

At the Hong Kong Ocean Economy Summit co-organised by Ocean3C and ReThink HK, I was fortunate to be a panellist on Sustainable Tourism and Ocean Conservation, with conservation expert Laurence from WWF-Hong Kong and blue finance practitioner Jose Luis Sanchez, moderated by the brilliant Charles Goddard from The Economist.

How can we merge tourism and ocean conservation to drive sustainable business with positive impacts – both social and environmental?

The discussion highlighted scalable projects in Asia, including Marine Protected areas management, and will touch on what can be done in the region.

My sharing outlined youth initiatives on ecotourism and ocean conservation, expressing our collective vision for the enhanced role of innovation and technology in developing the Blue Economy.

“What does the trillion dollar ocean economy mean to the local communities? There is a need to engage coastal communities, understand what they want from developing tourism in order to achieve true sustainability.

It’s time to move beyond #sustainability of doing no harm, to #regenerative of working as part of nature (Reed, 2006).”

Thank you Ocean3C for putting together this insightful Ocean Economy Summit to raise public awareness on marine conservation. The theatre was hosted by Green Monday the next day with a fruitful ESG summit, great work to Alvin Lee and team!