What is the Ocean Innovation Challenge
Launched in 2020 with Sweden and Norway support, the UNDP Ocean Innovation Challenge (OIC) identifies, finances, and provides mentoring on pilot initiatives that demonstrate highly innovative approaches to ocean sustainability, cutting across SDG14 targets and associated sustainability challenges.
The OIC is designed to systematically support and accelerate progress on the SDG 14 targets. Priority is given to initiatives that are innovative, replicable, scalable, sustainable, and potentially transformational. These include both truly new approaches, or the transfer or adaptation of existing proven approaches to new contexts and/or locales.
The goal of the OIC is to accelerate progress on SDG14 by catalysing replicable and scalable innovations - including technical, policy, economic and financial - that can be sustained and contribute directly to delivery of one or more SDG14 targets.
What It Does
The OIC issues a series of competitive 'Ocean Challenges' or Calls for Proposals, each focused on a specific SDG14 target. Calls for proposals are widely disseminated and are open to public or private entities, including governments, private companies (including start-ups), NGO/CSO, United Nations entities, academic institutions, and intergovernmental organizations.
Focus areas: The OIC addressed marine pollution (SDG 14.1), sustainable fisheries management (SDG 14.4, 14.7, 14.b), coastal ecosystems and marine protected areas (SDG 14.2, 14.5), and the blue economy in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and coastal Least Developed Countries (LDCs) (SDG 14.7).
Global reach: The OIC supported 36 innovative projects from diverse organizations worldwide. These projects benefited 29 unique developing countries, including nine SIDS, 10 LDCs, and one global project.
Impact: The OIC's support for 36 impactful ocean innovations demonstrates the far-reaching potential of ocean innovation to drive progress across all 17 SDGs. By providing comprehensive support – funding, mentorship, capacity enhancement, and fostering a global network, the OIC enhances the existing ocean innovation ecosystem and ensures real-world impact.
Why It Matters
The ocean faces unprecedented threats to the ecosystem goods and services it provides to humanity, from climate regulation to food security to coastal tourism. Despite some progress, many ocean challenges, from nutrient pollution to illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing to ocean acidification, continue to worsen.
For most sectors that use and impact on the ocean, from fisheries to aquaculture to industrial agriculture, the `business as usual` scenario will not deliver the kinds of transformational change needed to move towards truly sustainable ocean use.
A combination of technical innovation and cutting-edge policy, financial and economic incentives are needed to transform ocean-related sectors, both sea-based and land-based. While there are a handful of relevant initiatives, these are limited in their sectoral scope. Solutions are required that cut across the unique innovation needs of each SDG14 target, whether it be reduction of plastics pollution, eliminating overfishing, or enhancing access for small scale fishers. The OIC identifies and provides support to scale-up these solutions.
