Back to Blue by Economist Impact

At our inaugural  Global Plastics Summit  held on Oct 11-12th in Bangkok, Naka Kondo, the lead editor of Back to Blue Initiative spoke to Winnie Lau, project director, preventing ocean plastics at The Pew Charitable Trusts and Margaret Spring, chief conservation and science officer and Monterey Bay Aquarium. They discussed their impressions of the summit, and shared their recommenda...

Back to Blue’s lead editor, Naka Kondo speaks to Ben Alva, the founder of Azul Bio, a startup developing microbiome-based treatments and probiotics from nature that give ocean life immunity to human impact, such as coral resilience. They are planning their first pilot in November. Follow the  Back to Blue series  for more podcast episodes, or visit  backtoblueinitiati...

Charles Darwin once dismissed the ocean as a ‘tedious waste, a desert of water.’ Some of his contemporaries disagreed. The brave Challenger expedition of the 1870s set out to discover what lurked beneath, traversing over 100,000 kilometres and discovered 4,772 specimens, from sea snails to snake eels, discovered the deepest trench on earth, and toppled false assumptions about the lack of life unde...

Back to Blue's lead editor, Naka Kondo speaks to Anne Marieke Eveleens, co-founder and chief strategy officer of the Great Bubble Barrier, a Dutch social enterprise, about how air bubble technology can help clear plastics from our rivers. Follow the  Back to Blue series  for more podcast episodes, or visit  backtoblueinitiative.com  for more content. Back to Blue is an initiati...

On March 14th 2023 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a  proposal  to establish legally enforceable levels for six types of ‘forever chemicals’ known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). It is expected to prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses attributable to PFAS.   The rule would require public water systems to m...

The World Ocean Summit is an annual global event run by The Economist Group, which brings together the wide ocean community, from business and finance to governments, national and international policy-makers, civil society and academia. This year, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of this event in Lisbon, Portugal. In this episode, Martin Koehring, head of the World Ocean Initiative at Economist...

The world will continue to drown in plastic waste unless a bold and comprehensive set of policy changes is applied – this is according to Peak plastics: bending the consumption curve – a new report by Back to Blue, an initiative of Economist Impact and the Nippon Foundation. We delve into how we can decisively tackle plastic waste that is polluting our ocean and land environments with guest, Winni...

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 14, Target 14.3, calls for minimising and addressing the impacts of ocean acidification through co-operation at all levels. There is an urgent need for scientific communities to come together with the media, education systems, policymakers and civil society to help bring more attention to the issue and to come up with technological solutions and robust legisla...

In the second part of this podcast on deep sea mining, released during the World Ocean Summit Asia-Pacific , we dive deeper into the pollution risks of deep sea mining with Craig Smith, deep sea ecologist and professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. How has deep sea mining emerged as a sector and where are things standing today with this industry? In part 1 of this 2-part episode,...

At the COP27 summit, Emmanuel Macron became the first head of state to call for a ban on deep sea mining. In part 1 of this 2-part episode on deep sea mining, the Back to Blue team talks to Phil McCabe, an ocean campaigner, a member of the deep sea conservation coalition about the past, present and future of deep sea mining projects. What has been driving deep-sea mining as a trend? And what...

The Back to Blue team was at the UN Ocean Conference in Portugal and spoke to President Surangel Whipps Jr. of Palau about the ocean pollution issues they face, and Professor Bethanie Carney Almroth, Associate Professor of EcoToxicology, University of Gothenberg about her research into marine pollution and why she and her colleagues believe the pollution planetary boundary has been breached in the...

What is green and sustainable chemistry and can it be the solution to marine chemical pollution? What role can the private sector play? How can the circular economy accelerate the transition to safer and less hazardous chemicals? Charles Goddard, editorial director at Economist Impact discusses the responses to chemical pollution with Joel Tickner, professor of public health at the University of M...

Charles Goddard, editorial director at Economist Impact speaks to Pascal Lamy, president of the Paris Peace Forum, and Naoko Ishii, director at the Centre for the Global Commons at University of Tokyo, about marine chemical pollution in a broader context.  Is chemical pollution a key anthropogenic challenge on a par with climate change and biodiversity loss? Why do we need to includ...

In the second podcast of this series, we look at the extraordinary number of chemicals that have been created, produced and in use, what inventories exist on these chemicals, how much we know about their toxicity and potential for harm, and how well they are regulated. We’ll also explore the legislative, regulatory and other interventions needed to better manage, reduce and prevent chemical pollut...

Charles Goddard, editorial director at The Economist Group speaks to two experts about the scope and scale of the problem of chemical pollution in the ocean, and asks how worried we should be about the impact of chemical pollution on ocean life and ecosystems, and human health. The guest speakers are: - Elsie Sunderland, the Gordon McKay professor of environmental chemistry, and professor of earth...