Oceans

The ocean is home to 82% of Earth's life forms, covers 71% of our planet, and produces 50% of our oxygen. A true climate regulator, a global economic artery, and the connective tissue of civilisations, it is the unseen guarantor of both our survival and global interactions. Today, this ocean is under unprecedented anthropogenic pressure, threatening not only the ecological balance but also the very existence of the communities that live, work, and survive thanks to it.

Successive reports from IPBES, IPCC, and the United Nations have warned of the looming threat of irreversible climate change, which will radically transform coastal, island, and continental societies. Protecting the ocean means simultaneously preserving a vast carbon sink and living ecosystems while ensuring the cultural, economic, and social survival of entire populations whose destinies are intricately tied to the sea.

While the degradation of ocean ecosystems is well documented by the life, earth, and environmental sciences, sustainable solutions can only emerge from an understanding of the social, economic, and cultural dynamics that shape our relationship with the oceans. Understanding the ocean requires an interdisciplinary approach that merges the perspectives of the humanities and social sciences with those of the life sciences, in order to grasp both the complex dynamics of oceanity (belief systems, circulation of goods, resource management) and the imbalances caused by its exploitation, neglect, and deregulation.

In conjunction with the 3rd United Nations Ocean Conference, the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme is launching its Oceans Programme to highlight the essential and unique contribution of the humanities and social sciences to ocean preservation. Its goal is to position these disciplines at the heart of action, helping to understand the human dynamics behind ocean degradation and participating in the co-construction of sustainable and inclusive solutions with the relevant stakeholders.

Drawing inspiration from Fernand Braudel’s legacy and his seminal work The Mediterranean, our programme is part of an intellectual tradition that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Heirs to a vision in which long historical periods, global dynamics, and local realities are intertwined, we propose to understand the ocean as a total space where historical and social temporalities, economic cycles, cultural transformations, and immediate events all converge.

We are committed to research that examines the ocean in its entirety—from its historical depths to its contemporary shores—unveiling the complex interactions between natural and human systems and generating transformative knowledge.

To bring this ambition to life, we are deploying three complementary initiatives aimed at producing new knowledge and driving concrete action on policies and behaviour:

• Funding bold interdisciplinary research, building bridges between the humanities and social sciences and the life, earth, and environmental sciences to develop a comprehensive understanding of ocean systems.
• Building a dynamic knowledge network, connecting researchers, economic stakeholders, policy-makers, and civil society organisations.
• Disseminating and promoting knowledge, making research accessible to both decision-makers and the general public to inform and transform our relationship with the oceans.

As tensions in the oceans continue to rise, the FMSH seeks to explore the many forms of violence occurring at sea. This theme encompasses two major dimensions:

• Human violence (piracy and illicit trafficking, maritime conflicts and terrorism, exploitation of workers at sea, etc.).
• Environmental violence (marine pollution, over-exploitation of resources, destructive extractive practices, impacts of offshore activities, etc.).

By shedding light on these pressing issues, the Oceans Programme aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the challenges facing our seas and foster collective solutions.