Alumni Reflections on the IOI Training Program

Abstract

During the mid-1990s, I had the opportunity to attend the training program of the International Ocean Institute (ioi) in Halifax as a young university lecturer from Croatia, along with 23 participants from Canada and every corner of the world from 19 countries. Looking back more than two decades later brings fond memories of a very interesting group of people and a genuine multinational and multicultural setting that provided a unique experience for all of us. Unlike other students at Dalhousie University, ours was not a group of individuals in their twenties who had just emancipated themselves from their families and would have had no problem finding their way in their new campus environment. We were a very different selection of individuals, mostly in our thirties and forties, with well-established personalities, and a well-developed professional and family life in our distant home countries. It was amazing how those individuals, after some initial adaptation difficulties, forged an incredibly homogenous group of colleagues and friends. In retrospect, the ioi program gave us a possibility to develop a network of friendships, individuals with whom we would remain in contact, exchange ideas and expertise at conferences, and even meet again in person during our travels, because some of us participated in Pacem in Maribus conferences. As the Class of 1996, we had become part of a much wider global network of ioi alumni. The main advantage of ioi’s ocean governance training program was its interdisciplinary approach. It enabled all of us to gain a broader knowledge base that one needs when engaging in issues of the marine management and ocean governance. So, those of us who were experts in oceanography, marine biology or geology, had to focus on and learn about the background and procedure of codification of the international law of the sea; those of us who had completed their legal studies and had known in detail various provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (unclos) had the opportunity to become familiar with main developments in the natural sciences, which are indispensable for understanding various aspects of exploration and exploitation of marine living and non-living resources. Hence, every participant of the ioi training program gained broad interdisciplinary knowledge and important skills that remain important tools in our professional activities as scientific researchers or as civil servants in government agencies or international organizations.