In June 2024, the European Marine Board (EMB) published its Future Science Brief No. 11 ‘Marine habitat mapping’ during a ‘Brown bag lunch’ event hosted by DG Environment in Brussels. This document highlights current methods and future trends in the acquisition of data from the seabed and water column, discusses combining data to produce maps using modelling approaches and presents recommendations for adopting fit-for-purpose habitat classification schemes. It also provides an overview of what has been mapped within the European sea-basins, highlights the need to increase the quality and resolution of marine habitat maps, identifies critical gaps in habitat types and geographic extent, and describes the need to improve the assessment and communication of uncertainty and confidence in maps.
In October 2024, EMB launched its flagship foresight publication Navigating the Future VI “Placing the Ocean within the wider Earth system” in a dedicated event in Brussels. This document explores the critical role of the Ocean in relation to global climate, biodiversity, fresh water, and people, offering strategic direction regarding the future of marine research and policy. You can rewatch a recording of the event here and access the EMB slides here.
In December 2024, EMB published its Policy Brief No. 12 ‘Requirements for Coastal Resilience in Europe’. This Policy Brief presents key policy, scientific and community recommendations for building coastal resilience and enhancing the capacity to cope with impacts from coastal pressures, summarising the main messages and recommendations from the EMB Position Paper No. 27 “Building Coastal Resilience in Europe”. The recommendations from this document will be further discussed at the 9th EMB Forum on ‘Addressing coastal and water resilience on the land-sea interface‘ to be held on 2 April 2025 at the Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels.
The way in which EMB publications and their high-quality science-policy recommendations contribute to the Ocean Decade and its Challenges are highlighted inside each individual document.
More EMB publications can be found here.
The Belgian Federal State is represented in the EMB by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and in the EMB Communication Panel by the Institute of Natural Sciences.