All Posts by Flavia

Fredrik Haag

Head of the Office for the London Convention/Protocol and Ocean Affairs,
Marine Environment Division, International Maritime Organization

Fredrik Haag has a background in applied environmental research, focusing on marine and coastal zone management, and holds several postgraduate degrees; an MSc in Earth Sciences and a Licentiate of Philosophy (Phil. Lic.) in Environmental Impact Assessment from Uppsala University, Sweden, as well as a Master in Maritime Affairs from the World Maritime University. Fredrik joined IMO in 2006, and represents IMO in several UN wide processes, and has been deeply involved in matters related to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs, Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), as well as the Joint Group of Experts on Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP). As head of the Office, his primary task is to support the implementation of the London Convention and Protocol on dumping of wastes and other matters at sea, but he is also involved in IMO’s work on PSSAs, marine litter, noise and ship-strikes. He has also contributed to work on GHG emissions from ships and Ballast Water Management.

Woong Seo Kim

President
Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST)

Dr. Woong-Seo Kim received B.S. and M.S. at Seoul National University, Korea and Ph.D at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. He is the President of the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), as well as Chair of the Korea Oceanographic Commission (KOC).

He had experiences as the Director of Ocean Resources Department and Vice President of KIOST. He also played roles as the Director of IMMS (International Marine Mineral Society), and the Legal and Technical Commission of ISA(International Seabed Authority). He was the President of the Korean Society of Oceanography.

Thomas Klenum

Executive Vice President
The Liberian Registry

Thomas Klenum (FRINA, C.Eng, Eur.Ing) is Executive Vice President for the Liberian Registry with a career spanning 30 years as Naval Architect and Principal Surveyor to Managing Director with extensive technical, managerial and leadership experience gained through long term international assignments to China, United Kingdom, Luxembourg, the United States and Germany in addition to extensive experience from the Nordic area based in Denmark.

Graduated in 1993 with a B.Sc. in Naval Architecture and after a short period at A.P.Moller-Maersk’s shipyard (Odense Steel Shipyard) in Denmark worked for over 20 years for Lloyd’s Register prior to taking up position as Managing Director for SeaNet Maritime Services & Technical Director for Liberian Registry (both part of the YCF Maritime Group) in 2014. Appointed as Senior Vice President for Maritime Operations from January 2020 and from January 2022 as Executive Vice President for Innovation and Regulatory Affairs with the Liberian Registry.

Fuad Bateh

2022 G77 & China Chair´s BBNJ Team

Mr. Fuad Bateh consults regularly for a variety of organizations and institutions working in development, law and negotiations related to environment and water resources. Throughout 2019, he led negotiations on behalf of the Chair of the Group of 77 at the United Nations on the intergovernmental conference to elaborate an international legally binding instrument under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and this support has continued to the 2022 Chairman of the Group of 77. Previously, he served as the Water Governance and Infrastructure Advisor to the Office of the Quartet; Advisor on Environment and Water to the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean; Advisor to the Palestinian Minister of Water working on multilateral negotiations and water sector reform; Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Chief Negotiator and negotiations team; and also legal consultant for the International and Environmental Law unit of the World Bank.

José Manuel Pacheco Castillo

Nippon Foundation Fellow
Wotld Maritime University

LL.M. in International Maritime Law from the IMO International Maritime Law Institute (IMLI) in Malta (2019-2022). LL. B from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (2014). Mr. Pacheco has worked for the Peruvian Government as a legal adviser in maritime affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2013-2019) and the Ministry of Transport and Communications (2020-2022). He has received training in international courses on the law of the sea such as the Yeosu Academy on the Law of the Sea (Republic of Korea) (2017) and as a fellow in the Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies (Germany) (2018). Currently, Mr. Pacheco is taking a research stay at the World Maritime University as part of the Nippon Foundation fellowship program from the United Nations Division for Oceans Affairs and the Law of the Sea (DOALOS).

Tracy Shimmield

Co-Directors
Lyell Centre

Dr Tracy Shimmield is Co-Director of the Lyell Centre. Previously she was Associate Director of research institute the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and Managing Director of their trading subsidiary SRSL (SAMS Research Services Limited), Oban, UK.

Tracy, a marine geochemist, has over 30 years’ experience in environmental geochemistry. She obtained an MSc From Strathclyde University and a Ph.D. from Edinburgh University. Her research interests include the investigation and assessment of human impacts on the marine environment through the monitoring of pollutants and the study of biogeochemical processes involved in their redistribution. She is also an experienced radiochemist and utilises natural and manmade radionuclides as tracers of marine processes including sediment accumulation and mixing rates.

Dr Shimmield has been supervisor to 9 PhD students and has been a Principal Investigator on a number of research and commercial grants funded by the UK Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), European Union Framework programme and commercial companies.

Dr Shimmield is interested in how science and innovation can come together to realise societal benefit and economic growth. She is a member of the Scotland Can Do Forum set up by the Scotland’s Deputy First Minister.

As a marine biogoechemist, Dr Shimmield began working with the government of Papua New Guinea a decade ago, advising on mitigating and managing the impacts of mining on their marine environment, including the writing of ‘General’ and ‘Specific’ regulatory guidelines for the use of Deep Sea Tailings Placement (DSTP) in the country. As part of this project, Dr Shimmield organised and participated in an International Conference on Deep Sea Tailings Placement, held in Madang, Papua New Guinea (2008).

Over the years, Dr Shimmield has become a world-renowned expert in the environmental impacts of DSTP and was consequently invited to be a speaker at the Deep Sea Mining Summit held in London in May 2017. She has since travelled to Brussels to take part in a workshop on Technological and Environmental Aspects of Deep-Sea Mining and has presented to the Norwegian Mineral Waste Committee under the Norwegian Mining and Quarrying Industries (Norsk Bergindustri), and at the International Mineral Processing Congress held in Santiago, Chile.

Rosemary Rayfuse

Emeritus Scientia Professor of Law
UNSW Sydney

Professor Rosemary Rayfuse is Emerita Scientia Professor in International Law in the Faculty of Law and Justice at UNSW Sydney, Australia, where she developed and led the public international law program from 1994 to 2020. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA), and has held visiting and conjoint appointments at universities around the world, including both Lund University and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Professor Rayfuse researches in the area of Public International Law in general and more specifically in the Law of the Sea and International Environmental Law and has published widely on issues of ocean governance, protection of the marine environment in areas beyond national jurisdiction, and the normative effects of climate change on international law. She has particular expertise in high seas fisheries, climate change and the ocean, and polar oceans governance. In addition to providing advice to governmental and non-governmental bodies, Professor Rayfuse is a member of the Joint Group of Experts of the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP), the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law and the International Law Association Committee on International Law and Sea Level Rise.

Yoshitaka Ota

Professor of Practice, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington
Director, Ocean Nexus Center at EarthLab, University of Washington

Dr. Yoshitaka Ota has a background in social anthropology at the University College London. He has conducted ethnographic research on various coastal communities, including Palau, UK, Indonesia and Japan, studying socialization and cultural meanings associated with fishing practices. He is also director of the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center, an international initiative comprising an interdisciplinary team of 20+ institutes and cross-disciplinary scholars. As an anthropologist conducting social and cultural research on various coastal communities, one recurring theme he has witnessed across the world is the inequity between who has access to and benefits from oceans and who relies on oceans to live. We know that the human relationship with oceans under modern market systems is unsustainable, unstable and inequitable. We hear that in stories about overfishing and plastic straws and coral reef. What we do not often see are the human stories about the ocean communities that are already facing urgent ecological, social and political problems, even before complex environmental challenges are layered on. We are not in the rooms where scientists and leaders make political and societal decisions to the best of their ability, but without the capacity to not further disadvantage the marginalized and the disempowered. We need to create a new platform for ocean governance to identify the inequities that exist, develop knowledge-based solutions, and actually enact these changes to make oceans equitable for everyone. 

Richard Cronin

Principal Adviser, Marine Environment (Water Division), Department of Housing, Local Government & Heritage, Ireland
Chair, OSPAR Commission

Richard Cronin is Principal Adviser for the marine environment in the Irish government. He leads a team that develop and implement policy, programmes and measures and legislation for the protection and sustainable use of the marine environment. He is Marine Director for Ireland under the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and is responsible for the expansion of Ireland’s network of marine protected areas. He represents Ireland at EU, macro-regional and global levels and negotiates for Ireland and as part of the EU team in different fora. He holds a degree in Civil Engineering from University College, Cork and has extensive experience in environmental protection, international negotiations and multilateral cooperation; policy design and implementation; and systems analysis and governance. He is responsible for the implementation of the Convention of the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) in Ireland and was chair of the OSPAR Commission from 2018 – 2022.

Carl Grainger

Legal Counsellor
Department of Foreign Affairs, Ireland

Carl Grainger is a Legal Counsellor at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ireland. He advises on a wide range of matters involving public international law, EU law and Irish law. He regularly represents Ireland at EU and UN level, in particular in law of the sea forums. He is a member of the EU team in the ongoing BBNJ negotiations, focusing on the area of capacity building and the transfer of marine technology. Previously he held positions with UNHCR, the Irish High Court and the School of Law, University College Dublin.

He holds an LLB in Law from the University of Durham, an LLM in Public International Law from University College London and a Barrister-at-Law Degree from King’s Inns. He was called to the Bar of Ireland in 2010.