[Education and Environment]

The OSES project – Preserving the oceans through education and sport

On 25 October 2023 a workshop was held at Palma (Spain) on water sports and ocean literacy. This event initiated by the OSES project on preserving the oceans through education and sport was a success, bringing together stakeholders in water sports, local stakeholders and experts from the maritime sector.

Current challenge: preserving the ocean

The subject of the environment has recently become a major challenge in the face of the speed of its degradation and the threats surrounding it. The current concern, the ocean, a vital source of biodiversity, has a role to play in combating climate change.

70% of our planet is covered by seas and oceans according to WWF France.

Equally, according to the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Regional Cohesion, “the quantity of plastic in the oceans is between 75 and 199 million tonnes (which represents 85% of marine litter)”.

Preserving the seas and oceans is therefore a key issue in sustainable development, and it is a live setting for sport. Sport conveys values and can play a role in raising awareness and changing behaviours in a marine environment.

Taking action and putting in place measures for preserving our ecosystem is more crucial than ever today.

That is why Sport and Citizenship, already actively involved in environmental issues for over 10 years, as well as in the problems of eco-responsibility, conceived the project: “Ocean Sustainability through Education and Sport – OSES”, backed by the European Union’s Erasmus+ Sport programme.

Preservation, Sport and Education

How did the OSES project start? What is its aim?

Erasmus+ is the EU programme for education, training, youth and sport. It targets a very wide public: students, young people, apprentices, teachers, youth workers, sport sector stakeholders and trainers. It aims to offer to the maximum number of young people an experience of mobility and/or engagement allowing them to acquire skills, and to support cooperation between organisations in civil society.

Encouraged by Sport and Citizenship, 9 partners met to develop and implement the OSES project.

European Marine Science Educators Association – EMSEA (Belgium), a network of specialists in marine sciences acting as a hub for European marine education.
Surfrider Foundation Europe (Spain), an association dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of lakes, rivers, the ocean, waves and beaches.
Université de Barcelone (Spain).
Divers Alert Network Europe – DAN Europe (Malta), an international medical and research organisation dedicated to the health and safety of underwater divers.
Ocean as Common (France), association involved in preserving the Ocean.
Ligue de Voile de Normandie (France), enhancing boating and sailing in Normandy
Green Coast Surfing (Portugal), surfing school
Begi Bistan (Spain), a multidisciplinary team specialising in various domains: nature, culture, water sports, leisure and so on.
Sport and Citizenship (France).

Launched in January 2023, for a three-year period, OSES has the following objectives:

Giving water sport stakeholders and local sport stakeholders the educational resources for sport and sustainable development enabling them to teach young people about ecologically responsible activities and help them develop environmental awareness from a very young age.
Making the sport movement a key actor in educating young people to protect their planet and its natural resources. Sport has this capacity for transmitting messages to the greatest number of people.

The project will be organised around various workshops, and will run pilot interventions, including the workshop on water sports and protecting the oceans.

A collective intelligence workshop, combining two European projects

Led by Dominika Wojcieszek, specialist in marine conservation and an OSES project partner, two European projects decided to join forces at a shared workshop held in Palma on 25 October this year: the OSES project and the « Fins into the Water » project.

This event gave itself the objectives of pooling the expertise (new and complementary) of the participants and partners on this subject, and of gathering the ideas and creative approaches of each person at the workshop in order to devise a teaching and awareness-raising methodology for protecting the oceans through sport.

The event was rich in learning, sharing and creative ideas. It began with a presentation of the two projects, OSES and Fins into the Water, followed by a meeting with Marta Musso, a marine biologist and illustrator. From her experience she showed examples of teaching methods for raising the awareness of children and adults about protecting the marine ecosystem, such as making microscopes available with a travelling van, and stressed the importance of making known the maritime environment, and its ecosystem, to understand it better so as to preserve it.

The workshop was followed by group work covering several environmental issues linked to sporting disciplines drawn at random, which led to a sharing of experiences in two areas:

How does the particular water sport contribute to the given problem (for example, combating plastic pollution)?
How can the sport discipline have a positive impact on this issue?

This exercise brought out the first elements in educating about preserving the oceans through sport!

How will the workshop be followed up?

Resources will be available! A good practice guide will come out at the end of the year. Within it will be a methodology presenting various tools, contents, activities and areas which can be used by sport clubs and organisations to create programmes for raising awareness about the environment among different groups (young people and trainers).

A report on the current situation of the role of sport in protecting the oceans will be published at the same time. Other workshops on this subject will take place in 2024, in order to preserve the health of our allies, the oceans.

Find out more:

Find out about other environmental projects where Sport and Citizenship is a partner: “Green team” and “City green go“.
Sport and Citizenship Revue N° 53, Sport and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Catherine Chabaud, yachtswoman and journalist, interviewed for our revue 53, talked about sport and sustainable development: “In sailing, for example, more needs to be done with specifications for races and boats. Even with sailing, the boat construction, the materials used, and the way races are organised are still important. In our sport, which has a “clean” image, greater sobriety would be necessary to be fully in tune with our values.”

This article was published in our weekly “Hebdo Sport et Société” which appears every Friday. Sign up to our newsletter to receive the next article in your e-mails!

Read the previous article of the week:

Sport and mental health: ever faster, higher, stronger?