\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>n a boardroom in an office building in Oban, a picturesque town on the west coast of Scotland, trustees attending meetings have long been able to see the breaking waves of the Atlantic through the windows. But since last month, the ocean has also been present in the room, with an unusual new initiative ensuring that it now has a say on decisions shaping the future of the 140-year-old Scottish Association for Marine Science (Sams).<\/p>\n Sams was set up during the Scottish Enlightenment, a time of growing interest in oceanography when nature was seen as something to be dominated and exploited.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was this notion for a long time that the planet was so big, that we couldn\u2019t possibly have any impact on it,\u201d says Nick Owens, a marine scientist and the director of Sams. \u201cOver recent decades, we\u2019ve become more conscious of the impact that we\u2019re having, yet it occurred to me that our ethical decisions are almost entirely from the human perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n Tapping into a growing appetite for legal recognition of the rights of nature, and inspired by the strong connection between people and the environment he saw in Indigenous cultures in North America, Owens decided he wanted to give the ocean a real voice at Sams. So the organisation made it a trustee.<\/p>\n When the board meets, there is now someone in the room representing the ocean and giving a view on how decisions would affect its ability to function as an ecosystem.<\/p>\n Sams is not the first to try out this unusual idea. In 2022, the eco beauty manufacturer Faith in Nature was the world\u2019s first company to give nature a formal vote on corporate decisions that might affect it. Four years later, Faith in Nature\u2019s brand director, Simeon Rose, says it has led to a mind shift throughout the company, pointing to tangible changes such as the sourcing team making a greater effort to find more ethical ingredients to present to the board as options, such as essential oil from the waste of the orange juice industry and tea tree oil from areas where koala corridors are being created.<\/p>\n About 25 organisations have now followed suit in Britain, France, Belgium, the US and Australia.<\/p>\n <\/span>Neist Point on the Isle of Skye. The Atlantic Ocean that surrounds it is being given a voice at the table in Sams board meetings.<\/span> Photograph: Chunyip Wong\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Although the numbers are still small, Rose sees a nascent corporate movement developing. A French Green party MP recently proposed a law that would require nature to be represented on the boards of large companies.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a real sense of community-building worldwide between interested parties and a will to figure out how we can improve this and strengthen it,\u201d Rose says.<\/p>\n Sams set up a working group to explore the options. How should the ocean be represented? What did it mean to give it a voice? And even more fundamentally: what did they mean by ocean?<\/p>\n Helen Mitcheson, an environmental lawyer with a background in marine mammal science at the law firm Pinsent Masons, was part of these discussions. Delving deep into law, science and politics, the debates were interesting and sometimes difficult, she says. But she believes it was worth spending the time tailoring the implementation of the concept for Sams \u2013 a charity with a commercial arm and an educational role \u2013 and anticipating areas of potential conflict.<\/p>\n One area clarified by the debates was a definition of the ocean as planet-wide, including the seabed and parts of the airspace above but excluding human activities.<\/p>\n The working group also agreed that the ocean would be represented by a single person and named Mitcheson as the role\u2019s first incumbent. She has a say in all discussions but does not have a veto.<\/p>\n In the very first meeting, Mitcheson had to force an intervention after 20 minutes of discussion without any mention of the ocean, she says. She admits there is still work to be done to embed the concept fully but hopes that it will allow environmental factors to be considered early on in all strategic decisions.<\/p>\n Owens realised that, if Sams became truly committed to the idea, things might change in unpredictable and fundamental ways.<\/p>\n Giving the ocean a voice could, for example, lead the board in the direction of rejecting what would otherwise be a lucrative contract. Staff also questioned whether it would mean stopping them working with particular industries, for example aquaculture, on the basis that they are inherently exploitative.<\/p>\n <\/span>Nick Owens says that having the ocean on the board means \u2018we might decide not to work with a particular industry\u2019. <\/span> Photograph: Sams<\/p>\n \u201cWe would need to work with industries to understand them and their impacts, perhaps to help them minimise their impacts and perhaps to educate them,\u201d says Owens.<\/p>\n \u201cIn all instances, we would be completely objective, while representing the viewpoint of the ocean, and be entirely transparent and fact-based. It is possible that we might decide not to work with a particular industry, but we have not done so yet.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, Owens wants the decision to be meaningful. To allay fears that this is greenwashing, the ocean trustee\u2019s remit is being added to Sams\u2019 constitution so it becomes a formal part of its decision-making.<\/p>\n Although people outside Sams are often bemused by the new policy, Owens says it has been a much smaller leap internally. He knew the decision was coming alive when, listening to conversations at executive meetings and during coffee breaks, he began to hear the question: \u201cWhat would the ocean think about this?\u201d<\/p>\n As well as benefiting the ocean, Owens hopes the decision will help Sams take a more sustainable approach to its work and perhaps even attract more philanthropic funding in future.<\/p>\n \u201cCapitalism created the situation that we\u2019ve got now,\u201d says Owens. \u201cBut I think realistically it\u2019s going to be industry and capitalism and human society that\u2019s going to get us out of it.<\/p>\n \u201cRightly or wrongly, it is going to be the boardrooms where decisions are taken. I genuinely believe that in a decade or so this will be common practice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a boardroom in an office building in Oban, a picturesque town on the west coast of Scotland, trustees attending meetings have long been able to see the breaking waves of the Atlantic through the windows. But since last month, the ocean has also been present in the room, with an unusual new initiative ensuring<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[10726,1286,918,1718,1123,1785,4565,11002,384,5764],"class_list":{"0":"post-51119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-appointed","9":"tag-board","10":"tag-development","11":"tag-giving","12":"tag-global","13":"tag-marine","14":"tag-nature","15":"tag-ocean","16":"tag-scientists","17":"tag-scottish"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}