Unlocking the Potential of a Sustainable Blue Economy

Alistair Monument is WWF International’s Conservation Impact Director in Asia Pacific, supporting regional and national teams to build impactful strategies, partnerships and programmes that deliver real conservation outcomes. He manages the regional WWF conservation team and is responsible for many large-scale transboundary projects and partnerships with corporates and donors including USAID, SIDA, KFW, DFAT. He sits on the Board of Trustees for TRAFFIC International and other organisations engaging in climate, biodiversity, supply chains and consumption, and has over 30 years of experience in sustainability across 40 countries. Alistair was previously the Global Forest Practice Leader with WWF, Asia Pacific Director at Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and was the founding Director of Assurance Services International (ASI).

Patrick Yeung is the Associate Director, Climate Action Platform of AVPN, working to build a social investor network to support climate actions and promote sustainable development. He obtained his PhD in marine biology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2017, with professional field in ecological conservation. He joined the marine conservation team of WWF Hong Kong in 2014, to study on marine litter problems as well as coastal biodiversity through citizen science activities. He also led on identifying marine ecological hotspots as the basis for conservation and research works by facilitating expert groups. In 2019, he started working in Mainland China on marine and wetland habitat conservation, sustainable fisheries and ocean plastic. Besides, he actively built partnerships with NGOs, government authorities, research institutes, industry associations, and managed funding programs, to provide more innovative and in-depth sustainability solutions. He also supported international cooperation and policy advocacy on nature conservation and sustainable blue economy development.

My Sustainability Goals for 2024:

1. Support the development of biodiversity strategy action plan of Hong Kong to be an ambitious one which effectively conserve our marine biodiversity and sustainably manage the marine resources.

2. Introduce sustainable blue economy concept in Hong Kong, that evaluates the ecosystem service value of ocean and coastal ecosystem, take that into account when conducting marine spatial planning, and differentiate between sustainable and non-sustainable ocean economic activities.

3. Facilitate the joint ocean-climate agenda of government policy and corporate responsibility.

Zhang Yimo is the Priority Project Coordinator of Sustainable Blue Economy, World Wide Fund for Nature Beijing Office. His portfolio covers sustainable fishery, sustainable blue economy policies, marine protected area and No Plastic in Nature initiative, etc.

Before, he conserved wetland and waterbirds in the Yangtze at multiple levels, from individual wetland restoration, sub-basin governance, and national policy advocacy. He is also the NGO focal point in China for Ramsar Convention, the inter-governmental treaty on wetland conservation.

During his 16-year in WWF, he coordinated and supervised WWF Pavilion in Shanghai World Expo 2010, facilitated the evaluation of a 5-year Yangtze programme and development of the strategy for its next phase, acted as the advisor to CEO of WWF-China, developed organizational strategy and roadmap, and managed the Flyway Network Programme. Thanks to the role variety, he had opportunities in working with different stakeholders from governmental departments and NGO fellows to corporate and academic institutes. Thus, he gained extensive experience in the operation of international NGO. He understand profoundly how NGOs can catalyze changes.

He possesses passion and love for nature. He holds the opinion that in the Anthropocene era, while it is still enjoyable to appreciate the beauty of nature in wildness, it is equally important that the governance and commercial investments relevant to nature should be improved, so that human beings can protect and utilize nature in a more sustainable and respectful way.