A deep dive: Dr. Sumaila on sustainable ocean management in global partnership
March 22, 2021
When Dr. Ussif Rashid Sumaila was a boy, running and playing with other kids around his home in Nigeria, his grandfather would say, “Children, why are you hitting the ground so hard? You should walk on the earth as if it feels pain.” Only later did Dr. Sumaila begin to understand that his grandfather was, in fact, espousing sophisticated environmentalism.
Today, environmental considerations are Dr. Sumaila’s life’s work. But it’s not the land whose pain he is focused on, but that of the oceans. A professor and Canada Research Chair in Interdisciplinary Ocean and Fisheries Economics at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, he is making waves felt around the planet. The World Trade Organization, World Bank, United Nations, Convention on Biodiversity, to name a few, widely utilize and cite Dr. Sumaila’s research and analysis related to bioeconomics, fishing subsidies, climate change and ocean resource management.
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