Educate young people about the environment protection with the OSES handbook

Dominika Wojcieszek, Marine conservation specialist and Julie Mongard, Communication officer, Sport and Citizenship

How to preserve oceans against environmental crisis? This question was answered by the members of the OSES project (Ocean Sustainability Through Education and Sports) through a guide to best practices that brings together the contributions of 30 players from the sporting, academic, and marine sectors.

At the origin of this guide was a desire to raise awareness among young generations and invite them to act in the fight against ocean degradation.

The subject of the environment has become a major challenge for water sports enthusiasts who have seen their practice locations deteriorate throughout the years.

It is worth remembering that “70% of our planet is covered by ocean“[1] and plays a crucial role in maintaining the conditions necessary for life on Earth. Indeed, “the ocean makes Earth habitable“, essential Ocean Literacy principle (n°4)[2]. Water sports activities are also a favorable environment to promote education in favor of environmental preservation.

Faced with this fact, Dominika Wojcieszek (EMSEA), Idoia Fuertes (Surfrider España) and Begoña Vendrell Simón (Universitat de Barcelona), main authors and partners of the European project OSES, created this guide. It counts the way water sports enthusiasts, concerned by climate change and the water ecosystems degradation, protect their waters, raise awareness, and educate about the marine environment. In total, this guide gathers and shares 25 educational projects from 17 different countries. The idea: promote education on the ocean’s protection from the youngest age and raise awareness on the environment through sport, the goal the OSES project.

Understanding and protecting

Through initiative examples, this handbook invites sports organizations, schools, environmental NGOs as well as museums, and aquariums to develop their activities and/or approaches to protect the environment.

This tends to enhance our understanding of oceans through sports, preserve biodiversity, reduce our environmental footprint, fight against pollution, and think about our impact and our lifestyle through 6 themes:

« This guide will allow many sporting organizations to understand the key role they play in the protection of the oceans and to give them concrete means to take actions », explained Dominika Wojcieszek (EMSEA), marine conservation specialist and author of the handbook.

The youth, actors of tomorrow

Because understanding and preserving go hand in hand, sharing knowledge about the oceans is the key to an evolution towards eco-responsible behaviors. Therefore, making initiatives accessible freely to everyone through this guide is important.

“Through the OSES project, we think that sport is a precious way of raising awareness among a young public about respect of the environment and plays a role in attitude changes” underlined Julian Jappert, General Director of the Think tank Sport and Citizenship.

First resource developed as part of the project, this guide is a perfect example, providing ideas to encourage people to take action.

Beyond the created resources, members of the OSES project want to give the youth the key to seize the environmental challenges. That’s why 4 project partners will each be organising activities for young people to develop their knowledge of the oceans, through watersports activities and workshops.

« This way, we contribute to the rise of a new ocean-literate generation. They are the key actors for tomorrow’s changes » underlined Dominika Wojcieszek.

Towards a cleaner and more sustainable ocean

« The OSES project will produce in the following month a sea guide about a green sport. Inspired by the handbook, it must be able to make the difference and allow young generations to protect their practice locations with simple but impactful actions. In the end, we wish that this approach to environmental and marine challenges eventually becomes unavoidable in Europe. Each enthusiast must be able to know these teachings even before being able to practice a nautical discipline. It’s this way, that collectively we will answer to climate challenges and it’s also this mindset that our political authorities must adopt, if we want to respond to the emergency of the ecological transition challenges. » underlines Julian Jappert.