The UN Ocean Decade and Its Performative Impact on North Sea Governance: An Extended Event Ethnography

The UN Ocean Decade aimed to promote knowledge, understanding, and access to oceans that are variably envisioned and imagined by state and non‐state actors. The UN Ocean Decade vision, “The science we need for the ocean we want,” set the path for global oceanic water bodies from 2021 to 2030 and beyond. However, multiscalar ocean governance often presents as a confusing and unclear vortex. Fortunately, ocean governance events provide a spatial and temporal entry point for empirical analysis. This article draws on an extended event ethnography, designed at the intersection of geographies of knowledge and ethics of care, to argue that ocean governance events extend concentrically along spatial, temporal, and normative dimensions. The data was gathered from five extended field research stays as well as multiple ocean governance events. From a diachronic perspective, this contribution uses the European Maritime Day 2021 as a reference event and entry point. As such, it is possible to uncover how the UN’s metaphorical vision is (a) shifted into scenarios, which are (b) interlinked to precise projects that (c) spatially and temporally impact governance itself, the physical materiality of the North Sea, and the senses of place of people living with the sea.