Water Security as a catalyst for Ocean Security

1. Stewardship of lands and waters is undervalued in many sectors, with most actors applying limited conceptions of stewardship e.g. supply chain responses, rather than being valued in its own right.
2. Instead of specific activities, such as Payment for Ecosystem Services, stewardship itself should be funded. With fast-changing environmental conditions, directing investment into stewardship as a core response creates stronger conditions for healthy oceans and waters.
3. Most importantly, there is a need to invest in primary stewardship actors, whether directly in supporting their efforts to meet responsibilities to land and waters or indirectly in terms of community health.
Learning from Indigenous and Pacific approaches to stewardship has benefits to climate, oceans and water, including how it is financed.

Oceans: Through interventions by invited Pacific and Indigenous leaders, this session will demonstrate why investments in stewardship, and stewards, represents the most sustainable path forward in a time of financial and environmental uncertainty. Ocean health and freshwater health are connected, whether directly through fishery lifecycles, river dynamics, or the influence of oceans on freshwater availability and quality, or indirectly through the health and capacity of communities to undertake their responsibilities for stewardship. Investments in stewardship shifts focus from the delivery of different single services to maximising investment in people and places, and their aspirations, that other communities are highly dependent on.