Post-Doctoral Position in Environmental economics

• Call for expression of interest description

The Marie S. Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) programme is a highly renowned EU-funded scheme. It offers talented scientists the unique chance to set up 2-year research projects on their own with the support of a supervising team. Besides providing an attractive grant, it represents a major opportunity to boost the career of promising researchers.

The AMURE UMR 6308 at Université de Bretagne Occidentale / European Institute for Marine Studies is thus looking for excellent postdoctoral researchers with an international profile to write a persuasive proposal to apply for a Marie S. Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship grant in 2021 (deadline of the EU call set on September 15^th, 2021). The topic and research team presented below have been identified in this regard.

• Research project description

The present international legal and institutional regime set by the UN convention for the Law of the Sea (Montego Bay convention) to govern the ocean has been described as an “unfinished agenda” regarding the status of high seas. In 2017, after a process lasting more than a decade, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) established an intergovernmental conference to negotiate an International Legally Binding Instrument (ILBI) on the conservation and sustainable use of Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ). At the end of the third round of negotiations in August 2019, ILBI negotiators seem to acknowledge that some form of global governance structure – through a Conference of the Parties (COP) – will be needed to ensure a proper implementation of the instrument.

The Thermal Dome and the Sargasso Sea are two sites representative of the diversity and importance of the ecosystems of the high seas. They perfectly illustrate the fact that the ecological limits (interconnectivity of ecosystems) do not correspond to the legal delimitations established by the Montego Bay Convention. They are dynamic formations, which move, shrink, and expand with currents and winds. They are primarily located beyond national jurisdiction on the high seas, but may “encroach” permanently, regularly or from time to time on EEZs that are under the jurisdiction of States.

The objective of the project is to develop and test methodologies to assess needs and means for conservation strategies in the high sea with the Thermal Dome and the Sargasso Sea as research fields. The results will contribute to BBNJ negotiation and implementation by providing lessons learned on integrated ssocio-ecological assessment and hybrid governance for high sea conservation consistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and its implementing agreements, as part of a strategy based on an ecosystem approach.

The strategy proposed by the project is based on a DPSIR (Driving Force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response) analysis in each site, and an analysis of the current governance of the two sites and potential improvements, which will lead to the development of proposals to improve the governance and to establish conservation and management measures in these sites. These results will help inform future agreements on BBNJ and other high seas areas wishing to designate Area-based Management Tools (ABMTs). The knowledge gained will also support the development of agreements and action plans for the Thermal Dome and the Sargasso Sea.

The Marie‐Curie fellowship shall aim at developing, using the DPSIR approach, a complete analysis and synthesis of the issues on both selected sites. This will be done by leveraging stakeholder engagement and consultation, this will include defining the socio-ecosystem, identifying sustainability issues, characterizing the pressures and their impacts and the proposal of strategies to improve the sustainability of the socio-ecosystem. Moreover, it involves stakeholders in carrying out the diagnosis to build a hybrid and participatory governance model. In the light of the elements identified during these participatory and multi-sectoral discussions, the need and recommendations for potential governance structures and mechanisms will be generated with the participation of public and private stakeholders, based on the BBNJ instrument.

1- Freestone D., Laffoley D., Douvere F., Badman T. (2016). World heritage in the high seas: an idea whose time has come. World Heritage reports 44, UNESCO, 74pp.

2- Freestone D. & Gjerde K. (2016). Lessons from the Sargasso Sea. Challenges to the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction.

3- Jiménez J.A. (2017). The Thermal Dome of Costa Rica: an oasis of productivity off the Pacific coast of Central America. MarViva Foundation. San José, Costa Rica, 106 pp.

• Supervisor

As environmental economist, Denis Bailly has worked on participatory integrated assessment in support to the implementation of public policies in the fields of marine environmental and resources management, including the coordination of international programmes. Beside research on the evaluation of ecosystem services, he has developed, with his team, stakeholder engagement methodologies. He has also been in charge of coordinating the French Ecosystem and Ecosystem Services Assessment for Marine and Coastal Ecosystems and is responsible for the Economic and Social Analysis for the implementation of the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive in France

1- Claudet J.; Bopp, L.; Cheung W. L., Devillers R., Escobar-Briones E., Haugan P., Heymans J., Masson-Delmotte V.; Matz-Lück N., Miloslavich,P., Mullineaux L., Visbeck M, Watson R., Zivian A. M., Ansorge I., Araujo M., Aricò S., Bailly D., et al. (2020). A Roadmap for Using the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development in Support of Science, Policy, and Action. One Earth, 2-1 (2020) : 34-42

2- Quemmerais-Amice F., Barrere J., Rivière M.L., Contin G. and Bailly D., (2020) A Methodology and Tool for Mapping the Risk of Cumulative Effects on Benthic Habitats. Front. Mar. Sci 7 : 569205.

3- Link, Jason S., Thébaud, Olivier, Smith, David C., Smith, Anthony D. M., Schmidt, J., Rice, J., Poos, J. J., Pita, C., Lipton, D., Kraan, M., Frusher, S., Doyen, L., Cudennec, A., Criddle, K., Bailly, D. (2017) Keeping Humans in the Ecosystem. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 74(7).

For further information, please visit the profile of Denis Bailly on Researchgate  

• Research environment

The project will take place within the Research Group AMURE, a research group in social sciences dealing with public policies related to maritime activities, the use of resources and ecosystem preservation in marine and coastal areas. Bringing together a group of more than 70 researchers, engineers, post-doctoral researchers and doctoral students in economics, law, anthropology and sociology, AMURE is one of the main French and European research and research training centres on marine policy issues relating to the sustainable development of maritime and coastal activities and areas. AMURE is involved in many collaborative projects at the national, European and international levels. AMURE is part of the European Institute for Marine Studies (IUEM), one of the most important multidisciplinary marine research centres in France, ranked 12^th in the 2019 Shanghai ranking for oceanography and third in Europe. For further information, please visit the website of IUEM

• Suggestion for interdisciplinary / intersectoral secondments

Collaborations with MarViva in Costa Rica, the Sargasso Sea Commission and the French Biodiversity Agency are expected within this project

• Skills Requirements

• Experience of interacting with marine management in international fora (conservation bodies, RFMOs, IMO, …)
• Experience in interdisciplinary research between social and natural sciences
• Fluent in English and Spanish, French is a plus