BRIDGES Ocean Talks #5

Observing the Environment and Society: How to Build Social-Ecological Systems Observatories?

Join us for the fifth webinar in the BRIDGES Ocean Talks series!

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📅 Tuesday, september 8, 2026, at 1:00 PM (UTC+4)

🗨️ Speaker : Matthieu Juncker, marine biologist, and project manager in climate change adaptation and marine resources management in the Pacific

Abstract

During this webinar, Matthieu Juncker, biologist with a PhD in marine ecology from the University of New Caledonia, and specialist in Pacific marine resources management (IUCN, SPREP, ANCB, IRD, Ifremer), will share his experience and expertise on the observatories he contributed to design and develop across the South Pacific.

Drawing on a panel of observatories (OEIL, CRIOBE, GOPS, coastal fisheries observatories in New Caledonia and Wallis-et-Futuna, etc.), Matthieu will present their core purpose, operations, and governance, before addressing the conditions required to ensure the long-term sustainability of these monitoring and decision-support tools.

This discussion feeds into the BRIDGES OBSERVATION targeted project, which aims to establish an interdisciplinary, multi-scale observatory focused on marine and coastal social-ecological systems in the Southwestern Indian Ocean. In September 2026, BRIDGES OBSERVATION held a regional workshop bringing together around forty partners from across the BRIDGES study sites (Mayotte, Comoros, Mozambique, and Réunion) to identify priority variables and indicators, as well as tailored monitoring strategies to track the long-term functioning and evolution of the various social-ecological system components.

Speaker

Matthieu Juncker

Matthieu Juncker, marine biologist, and project manager in climate change adaptation and marine resources management in the Pacific.

For over twenty years, he has worked at the interface of science, environmental management, public policy, and local stakeholder support.

From 2009 to 2019, he served as Director of the New Caledonia Environmental Observatory (OEIL), where he helped build a collaborative framework for producing, analyzing, and sharing environmental data. Through this role, he led baseline environmental assessments, developed indicators, specifically on fishing pressure and biodiversity, established participatory monitoring networks, and facilitated multi-stakeholder forums bringing together scientists, government agencies, managers, and local communities.

He then coordinated the coastal fisheries and aquaculture component of the PROTEGE regional programme within the Pacific Community from 2019 to 2024. In this role, he supported the development of coastal fisheries observatories in New Caledonia and Wallis-et-Futuna, designed as decision-support tools and frameworks for the shared management of marine resources.