Inria Chile is part of the Blue Talks
Date :
Changed on 30/04/2024
On April 24, 2024, a Blue Talk was held in Valparaíso, organized by the Embassy of France in Chile and the Embassy of Costa Rica in Chile, together with the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Inria Chile was present at this important event in preparation for the 2025 Nice Ocean Conference.
Promoting and raising awareness about oceans and climate change ahead of the III United Nations Conference 2025 to be held in Nice, France, and the High-Level Preparatory Event to be held in Costa Rica in June 2024; creating a space in Chile that allows for exchange between actors from all horizons; identifying and showcasing Chilean cases of good practices in the field of Ocean Action. With these objectives, the French Embassy in Chile and the Embassy of Costa Rica in Chile joined forces with the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV) to resume the Blue Talks, a series of conversations where prominent panelists from different horizons discuss and share their experiences on this topic.
On April 24, 2024, the Blue Talk "The Ocean and Sustainable Development: Challenges, Technologies and Conservation" took place in Valparaíso in the presence of representatives such as the Costa Rican ambassador Adriana Murillo, of the Chargé d'affaires a.i. of France, Jean-Baptiste Chauvin, of the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in Chile, María José Torres, of the Subsecretary Subrogate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, Rodrigo Olsen, and of the Director General of International Affairs of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Orlando de la Vega Luna
The conversation was moderated by Georgianna Braga-Orilliard, from UNDP Chile and featured prominent representatives from civil society, academia, and the Chilean navy.
The first presentations were given by Catherine Dougnac, Scientific Director of Wildlife Conservation Society Chile and Jaime Gatica, Head of the Fishing Department, DIRECTEMAR, Chilean Navy, who presented "Conservation and sustainable use of marine ecosystems" and "Technologies for combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in coastal and high seas areas", respectively. They were followed by interventions from Sara Garrido, Coordinator of the National Corporation of Women in Artisanal Fisheries with the presentation "Artisanal fishing and the challenges surrounding the conservation of marine ecosystems" and Hermann Manríquez, Director of the Institute of Geography of the PUCV with “Observation tools for sustainable coastal zone management”
As the last panelist, Luis Martí, scientific director of Inria Chile, participated as an expert in the panel "Artificial Intelligence Models applied to the understanding of the oceans and climate change" and presented one of the projects of great relevance for Inria Chile: the OcéanIA challenge, which he co-leads along with the director of Inria Chile, Nayat Sánchez-Pi. In this project started in 2021 and led by Inria Chile, more than 25 researchers, engineers, and doctoral students from both France and Chile are currently participating.
The objective of OcéanIA can be summarized as seeking answers to three increasingly complex interdependent questions:
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How does the Ocean mitigate climate change?
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How will climate change affect that capacity?
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What can be done to protect the ocean?
In addition to Inria Chile, the project has the participation of the TAU project-team from the Inria Saclay Centre, the BIOCORE project-team from the Inria Centre at Université Côte d’Azur, and the ANGE project-team from the Inria Paris Centre. The Tara Ocean Foundation, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, the Centro de Modelamiento Matemático de la Universidad de Chile, the GO-SEE Federation, and the Combi laboratory of the Université de Nantes are also participating.
In his presentation, Luis highlighted the importance of this project for understanding the crucial role of the Ocean in climate change mitigation and the results obtained under the OcéanIA project to date. In particular, he demonstrated how the artificial intelligence, computer vision and modeling techniques developed under the project will make it possible to simulate climate change scenarios and predict their impact on plankton ecosystems and their possible displacement.
The event organized on April 24 in Valparaiso brought together more than 150 people: diplomats, researchers, students, representatives of civil society and the private sector, as well as children from schools in the city.
What are the Blue Talks?The Blue Talks are a series of conversations organized through the diplomatic network, in cooperation with partners from each country, with the aim of promoting the topics of the Conference by generating a space for dialogue, sharing experiences, innovative approaches, and opportunities in the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14). SDG 14 seeks to "Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development," and in 2022, Costa Rica and France were chosen to be co-hosts of the 2025 United Nations Conference in Nice to support the implementation of this SDG. In particular, the "Ocean Conference" will review instruments on plastic pollution and biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions, dialogue on ocean mining exploitation, and commitments from more than 100 States to protect at least 30% of marine areas by 2030. Blue Talks have already been held in different cities and countries around the world: at the OAS headquarters in Washington DC, in India, Guatemala, Canada, Argentina, Austria, Ecuador, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, and Uruguay. For the first time, a Blue Talk was organized in Chile on April 24, 2024, in the Pacific coast city of Valparaíso. |