[0:05]Good afternoon and welcome to everyone that's joined us today for our final information webinar for the year. 2025 has been a really busy year for IPAS, but a really good year with many exciting events and highlights and lots of evolution. So we're really happy to be here with you today to give you an update of where we've been and where we are and where we're going for the year ahead. So welcome here today. So just a reminder for those of you who let me maybe begin with some housekeeping. If you have a chat, if you have a technical question or you want to say hello to someone, please do that in the chat, but if you have a question for the team that you'd like us to respond to formally, then please use the Q&A function. And there will be a session at the end, we will allocate at least half an hour of time for questions for Q&A, so please feel free to write your questions in the Q&A and we will we will respond to them at the end of the session. So a brief reminder for those of you who are new to IPAS. IPAS is an accelerator for global ocean targets. It strengthens the capacity of states to implement their global ocean commitments more efficiently, swiftly and inclusively. And the global targets that we are working with most closely are the SDG 14 targets and sub targets, global biodiversity framework targets and the BBNJ targets. And we do this implementation through a functional architecture for delivery. Um and before we get to that, I'm just going to tell you about the approach and the way that we the way that we approach the questions that come towards us. IPOS is a demand-driven platform. It receives requests from states or from groups of states or regions on ocean sustainability targets. It then mobilizes knowledge systems including science community, indigenous and local communities, civil society, international organizations where relevant and the private sector where relevant. into a composite inclusive group of knowledge holders, rights holders and experts to develop responses in close collaboration with the state or the requesting group of states to deliver really actionable and concrete policy options for the state that help them implement their targets at a at a global scale but also at a national and regional scale. And we do this through this functional architecture of three different policy support services. The first is called an action request. This is our longest service, it takes around 12, 10 to 12 months for delivery. And this is a a request where much deeper engagement is required with different stakeholders, different knowledge holders. It also requires deep engagement with the state to ensure that the response is refined and that it's really contextually relevant for the state and completely appropriate for them to implement and action. We bring into this hybrid working group some of the stakeholders and and knowledge holders that I mentioned previously and then develop the responses in a co in a co-development way with the state and with various stakeholders. The the much shorter response for more urgent matters is the rapid response. This is done within several weeks up to 12 weeks at the most. And for this, we utilize our IPOS GPT tool, which has been developed as a bespoke tool for the team, with a body of knowledge that comprises just science from global environmental assessments and top journals, and also global environmental legislation. And it it engineers our hallucination and the risks associated with that and every reference is um every every comment is referenced with a link and it's also managed by three or four experts from a human perspective. The results of this are produced and in also in collaboration with the state and shared after a very short period of time, much faster than the usual science policy processes. The last service is a different approach, this is called a catalyst, and this is where it's a much more bottom-up approach where groups such as scientists or private sector or indigenous people or local communities or practitioners can raise an issue that they think needs to be considered more closely in the state or in the region. Or highlight a solution that's really working, that needs to be scaled. IPAS then has a similar process of the hybrid working group as for the action request, bringing together multiple stakeholders to then deliver a response that can be shared with the state or the region to inform them in more detail about this challenge or opportunity. We have tested these three functional services with with three pilot studies during the last two years. We did an action request part of an action request for France on deep sea mining, which looked at the brought together a scientific consultation of a a group of around 20 scientists from around the world to look at what the science says about deep sea mining and the need for a precautionary approach. The this was not a full action request in the sense of the action request development that we've now come to over the period of the evolution of IPAS, because action requests in future will be much more broadly spread in terms of knowledge inputs and um worked with the state throughout the development of that process. We also tested the rapid response with Seychelles and for this, we did a question on SDG 14 on on marine pollution and looked at how to develop a framework for a circular economy approach to marine pollution on the island. And this was a very useful response for the government and they really like the the output. And then finally, we also tested the catalyst approach in Costa Rica with 23 communities, small scale fishery communities to discuss with them how to include their voices in the implementation of global biodiversity framework targets 30x30 and we had a session with them as well at UNOC on the um on the results of this of this pilot. So we've this year has been a year of building. We launched the IPAS at UNOC in June this year, and the following the year that's followed has been about proving the concept with these pilots that I've just gone through.
[7:20]About securing official endorsement from some from several states and we'll talk about that a little bit later and also from several UN agencies. And then lastly, about securing financial sustainability. So on the timeline, you'll see that from our launch at UNOC, we went through a process of establishing how our acting knowledge committee will work and Pierre will take you through the acting knowledge committee in more detail shortly. We also launched our services submission guide and published the rapid response report. And we in September appointed our acting knowledge committee and have now received requests from states and been through the process of selection, which we'll tell you about now and it's very exciting.
[8:07]And we're now in this phase and we've secured sufficient funding also for the ramp up period. And we're now in this phase where we're about to start implementing the IPOS processes, governance and services in the real world for states in response to their requests to demonstrate and to learn and adapt for the next two years before we go into a full deployment. And I'm going to hand over to Pierre to take you through some more of the details.
[8:42]My sound weather of course. Sorry, thank you Tanya and thank you for the first part of this presentation. I'm pleased to introduce myself, I'm Pierre Karleskind, the Secretary General of the Ocean Sustainability Foundation, which basically host the IPOS project now. And I've joined the IPOS team a few months ago now for for some of you, I'm a kind of new face for the IPOS project. Um during last month, uh since the launch of the IPOS ramp up phase, we've been establishing the different governance uh bodies, of course, the first one is the interim steering committee uh uh that is in charge of steering our uh affairs, composed by the person that are the most relevant, I don't know if they are the most relevant, but at least they are here for guiding us and helping us dealing with all the things that we we promise to to to deliver.
[9:37]Françoise Gail, I want to mention her is the chair of this interim steering committee. We have the two co-chair of the knowledge committee. I will present this knowledge committee in a in a few minutes, Hansto Partner and Sheng Weili. Joachim Claudet, which who represents the coalition of scientific institution that uh helps us also managing our uh services. And two appointed experts, Siglinde Gruber was a great experience on European affairs and ocean things and Fernabe Meneces was professor uh in San Paolo. As you can see on the left part of the slides, we have of course a core team, which I will present you in a few minutes, uh and we have uh created this uh knowledge committee, assembled this uh knowledge committee, which uh I will present you also with the steering committee and of course we have the strategic partners.
[10:32]Regarding the um regarding the uh acting knowledge committee, just to mention that this is an interim governance uh structure as during this rampant phase, we are going also to test the uh this uh governance uh structures. The Acting Knowledge Committee in brief, ensures the scientific and technical rigor of all IPOS outputs because they are going to validate them during this ramp up phase. They review, they prioritize also the test requests, so they play a really great role in the selection process, and were they guarantees the credibility, inclusiveness and quality as IPOS become becomes operational. Uh they are all experts in different fields uh like ocean governance, law and policy, natural and marine sciences, social sciences, knowledge coproduction, transdisciplinary uh method, private sector engagements, and Indigenous knowledge uh engagements. We have chosen them because they are also they come also from different uh part of the world. We have the IPOS core team, Françoise Gaillard, the chair of the interim steering committee, Tanya that uh just present the first part of the they are the two co-leads of IPOS, uh leading the IPOS project uh since uh 20202022. I'm the Secretary General of the Ocean Systemity Foundation and you have the rest of this old team. Uh they are all experts in a way of ocean, ocean policy and we are pleased to uh uh be uh the people working on the day-to-day implementation of the um services. As uh Tanya mentioned, we have launched a call for uh interest uh amongst the different states uh of the world, amongst all the the member states of the United Nation. And uh you will find on the link, which is in the chat, uh this submission guide because we you might be interested uh because you might represent some states or you might be aware of states that are looking for expertise for implementing the their international commitment to the ocean. So please, do not hesitate to go and look at this request submission guide, which is really uh relevant for uh understanding how we work. So after the the the the launch of our call for uh request, maybe next slide please. We have requested the acting knowledge committee to uh rank the different requests that we received based on uh selection criteria that you have on this slide. Um most of them are clear uh on topics like sustainability, impact, feasibility, just to precise that on the left part, you have the action request, selection criteria, and on the right side, you have the rapid response, selection criteria. So I was saying that it is on feasibility, socio-economic outcomes, urgency, stakeholder support, in kind support, because this is also important that the requesting state is involved in the implementation of these services, and for the rapid response, so the rapid response is the as the its name says it, it's the rapid one.
[14:29]A few weeks, around three months is for Costa Rica, and Costa Rica for the preparation for the effective implementation of the BBNJ agreement, uh in order to uh help Costa Rica to uh see what's the normative gap uh analysis in the implementation of the BBNJ agreement. We have the opportunity last week to scope a little bit with the the the representative of Costa Rica, which part of BBNJ we are going to help them to implement in their national law. For the action request, so this is the one which is uh longer and just to mention that for 2026, we are only going to run rapid responses and action request. Ocean catalyst will be for 2027. For the action request, um the selection was on South Africa. Uh on the uh asking us to enable a whole of society approach in the South African marine spatial planning and biodiversity action to inform the national biodiversity strategy and action plan and GBF uh targets.
[15:38]Next slide please. How are we going to proceed for this uh different uh request? Now we are we've started, I would have mentioned that with South Africa, we've also engaged with the national authorities in order to scope also a little bit the the the request to understand where we are. We have a project manager that will manage the the project by by definition, but the most important thing as Tanya mentioned before is that we are going to mobilize a hybrid working group. This will this hybrid working group will be composed by experts, by representative of the different domains that we have uh mentioned in the constitution of the hybrid, civil society, private sector, Indigenous people, uh policy makers, uh UN bodies, of course, and of course a part of scientists, knowledge holder, academic. And in order to be sure that this will this hybrid working group is uh well working, we have a local facilitator that we have just hired by the by the way, who is going to be in charge of leading the work of this hybrid working group. At the end of the work, and this is something which is really important, the the report that will be released will be peer-reviewed in order to be sure that it is on the highest scientific level possible, and will be validated by the acting knowledge committee before being transmitted to to the government, which will be in a way in a in a in a position of exchanging and actively participating in the in the work that we will have. For the rapid response, next slide, with Costa Rica, we also have course have a project manager, who will be in charge of making sure that everything go forward, and we will hire some, well, hire, we will have some technical, uh, not technical, thematic expert, in fact. So thematic expert, uh we don't have any hybrid working group, it is not it is on the slide, but that is not true. So we have uh this IPOS GPT tool, which is a kind of, which is a tool that will make really a quick access to all the scientific literature on the topics that we are going to to address. On this thing is what's the interest of BBNJ implementation, how should we uh implement it, but the fact is that this will enable us to accelerate uh much many much uh a lot the the the speed of uh mobilizing uh knowledge uh on that. At the end, that is the same, the report will be peer-reviewed and the acting knowledge committee will have to validate the the result and the report that we are going to transmit to the Costa Rican government.
[18:36]Next Pierre, I'll um jump in here just to give you some context about the support that we have for IPOS that's that's um on the slide over here. So at at UNOC 3, we were mentioned in the final declaration of UNOC 3 and also integrated into the European Ocean Pact as a as a priority um within the ocean pact for the science policy interface bridging. We also received a wonderful letter of support from UNEP and we've been recognized by the UN Decade as a contribution to ocean actions in the UN Decade of Ocean Science and Sustainable Development. We're coming towards the end of our European tender for the feasibility assessment of towards IPAS that wraps up at the end of January and then we'll be moving into the full ramp up phase or implementation with OSF, the Ocean Sustainability Foundation that Pierre mentioned at the beginning. Just to give you a sense of political support, these are states that have given formal formal support for IPOS. So we have ten states supporting, which is very exciting and we really hope to grow this group of supporting states in the coming year. And then from a scientific perspective, we have 62 scientific institutions around the world that support IPOS across 25 different countries, in six continents, and this core of scientific support will be the future the future knowledge network of IPOS that we're building. So this will be the core knowledge base that supports the work that IPOS will do into the future. And one one mention I wanted to make on political support, which was nice for us to see was yesterday at UNEA 7, during the ocean governance session, the new ambassador for the environment from France, Barbara Pompili, mentioned IPOS specifically as a project that has been supported by France and by other countries as a solution for accelerating the implementation of global ocean targets. And I think we have come to the end of our session. So please, please put some questions into the Q&A if you have any questions you'd like to ask.
[21:00]We'd love to hear what they are and our team will read them and direct the questions to the appropriate team member. Thank you so much for your attention.
