Sustainability at Sea: Transformations in Contemporary Ocean Governance

Date: 7 – 8 May

Time: Thu 13:00 – 19:00, Fri 9 – 15:45 (CEST)

Location: University of Bamberg, Feldkirchenstr. 21, FG1/008, hybrid (roundtable) 

The ocean is governed through an increasingly dense set of formal and informal arrangements spanning sustainability, security, and economic development. In a rapidly changing environmental and geopolitical context, governance at sea is shaped by competing imaginaries, distributive conflicts, and evolving technological capabilities. Beyond traditional state-centric processes, soft law mechanisms, multi-actor networks, and locally grounded practices increasingly drive rule formation, producing governance dynamics that unfold simultaneously at local, national, regional, and global levels. 

This workshop foregrounds sustainability as a cross-cutting concern in these multilevel governance transformations. It examines how diverse actors conceptualise sustainable uses of the ocean and how these visions intersect or clash with agendas of extraction, innovation, and economic growth. Adopting an explicitly interdisciplinary approach, the workshop brings together perspectives from political science, international law, human geography, and sustainability studies to illuminate how governance practices are formed, contested, and transformed. 

By tracing dynamics across areas such as marine resource management, maritime law enforcement, blue economy frameworks, and questions of blue justice, the workshop explores how competing sustainability narratives shape authority, legitimacy, and power at sea. Ultimately, the workshop asks what forms of sustainability and justice are being institutionalised through contemporary ocean governance, whose interests they serve, and what these evolving practices mean for the future of the ocean.

Organiser: 

Dr. Anja Menzel (anja.menzel(at)uni-bamberg.de) 

Registration:

To attend the roundtable online (Thursday 17:30), please register by email at  claudia.genslein(at)uni-bamberg.de.

Preliminary Programme: