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NOS International Strategy: Summary

Our growing reliance on the oceans for sustainable development, cultural heritage, and ecosystem services accelerates international interdependence within the global ecosystem. Securing socioeconomic development and environmental protection at home will require international collaboration at regional and global levels. Degradation of coastal habitat, declines in fisheries productivity, heightened coastal vulnerability to marine hazards, and changing ocean chemistry are just a few of the symptoms of the need to enhance the international community’s resilience to natural and anthropogenic environmental stressors.

The NOS envisions “An informed global community that uses a comprehensive understanding of the role of the oceans, coasts, and atmosphere in the global ecosystem to make the best social and economic decisions to foster coastal resilience.”

To build coastal resilience internationally, the National Ocean Service’s International Strategy organizes its activities to achieve five goals and associated actions:

NOS International Strategy Goals

Actions to Implement the Goal
Observe and Predict the Earth System
  • Advance international understanding and application of NOS integrated data products and services, in particular V-Datum.
  • Increase the spatial and temporal coverage of multi-purpose coastal observing platforms in the Caribbean and Pacific, in particular to support biological, sea-level, and geodesy studies.
Improve and Maintain the Viability of Marine and Coastal Ecosystems
  • Develop and exchange U.S. best practices to improve ecosystem-based approaches to management through coordination and integration of coastal area management, marine protected areas, and coral ecosystem management globally.
  • Develop and exchange modeling and predictive capabilities to enhance ecosystem-based approaches to management by understanding and managing the impacts of contaminants, diseases, and nutrient enrichment, with special emphasis on harmful algal blooms.
  • Develop specific regional initiatives to reduce key threats and build resilient marine and coastal ecosystems including a “Resilient Caribbean Ecosystems and Communities” initiative that integrates NOS/NOAA delivery of products and best management practices in this and other priority target regions.
Mitigate and Adapt to Impacts of Climate Change and Vulnerability
  • Develop and share tools to understand ecosystem resilience to climate variability and change and their impacts on coastal communities, including ocean acidification, sea level rise, and coral bleaching prediction.
  • Develop and share tools for adaptive management working with the coastal management and MPA communities, in particular in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Reduce Vulnerability to Natural and Anthropogenic Hazards
  • Develop NOAA international marine debris strategy.
  • Share NOS tools and methodologies in hazard prediction, preparedness, mitigation, and response with priority regions and countries.
Promote Safe and Environmentally Sound Navigation
  • Facilitate improvement of wider Caribbean and Latin American regional hydrographic and cartographic capacity by collaborating in activities that demonstrate the importance of hydrographic information for safe navigation, protection of the marine environment, and sustainable economic growth.
  • Integrate environmental, navigation, and geospatial information in marine and coastal management, navigation policy, maritime infrastructure development, and management tools.

These goals and actions provide the compass for a new corporate pursuit of international collaboration both formally, through more than 25 existing NOS international agreements, as well as informally through partnerships and scientific exchange.

This Strategy completes the second stage of a three-part international planning process. First, in January 2007, NOS adopted the International Operational Framework, which defines a deliberative process for building NOS’ international priorities and positions through the NOS International Coordination Council (NICC). Second, this International Strategy charts new policy direction, articulates the five goals to foster coastal resilience and identifies priorities for the International Annual Action Plan. Third, NOS will develop an International Annual Action Plan with an agency-wide perspective on NOS international engagements with associated performance measures, resource plans, and programmatic integration to ensure international engagements have the greatest societal benefit and investment return for our efforts.

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