The 4th annual Mega Deltas Conference was hosted by The State Key Laboratory for Estuarine and Coastal Research at East China Normal University, in Shanghai, China from October 19–22, 2025. River delta systems are home to more than 500 million people worldwide, provide key points of trade and economic production, and support vital ecosystem functions.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a meeting at Thinkers Lodge in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, in August this year, as part of their continuing commitment to support meetings that address science and societal issues. Our goal for this meeting was to discuss international responses to climate change in coastal communities. Fifteen scientists, practitioners, managers, and indigenous representatives from Australia, Canada, Mexico, the Mi'kmaw Nation, USA, and the West Indies were invited to share their perspectives on coastal climate adaptation. Over three days of meetings, we identified key issues, challenges, and ways forward. We also convened a local meeting to share our discussions with the Pugwash community and to solicit their valuable insights.

One of the highlights of our recent Basin Health Report Card workshops in Katete and Mpika, Zambia, which we undertook with our partners at Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the Zambia Water Resources Management Authority (WARMA), was the game we play with everyone, called “Get the Grade.” It’s one of the highlights of almost all of our stakeholder engagement meetings these days. Participants enjoying Get the Grade at the Mpika workshop.

Co-production and inclusion themes on the rise at the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation bi-annual conference.

Heath Kelsey's account of the Future Earth Coasts Executive Committee meeting in Bremen, Germany.

Participants at the first Coastal Resilience Symposium in Mérida, Yucatán represented numerous institutions and backgrounds from Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Portugal, and the United States. Credit:

The first in person meeting of the new Future Earth Coasts International Project Office (FEC IPO) was in Bremen 27-29 March 2019. It’s an exciting time to be involved in Future Earth Coasts; the organization has a new home centered at the Liebnitz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen, and additional offices distributed among several institutions in China, Australia, the United States, and Germany.

These dolphins mark the entrance to the State Street Pier in Santa Barbara, California. Photo credit Heath Kelsey … Information generated through the Global Ocean Observation System has fundamentally … changed the way we understand our oceans and climate, but advances in ocean … observations have focused on physical elements like water temperature, currents, etc. more than they have for measurements of biological resources.

The tomato icon was used to represent the Food Security and Land Use Change CRA … IAN has been working with the Belmont Forum since December, 2016 to help communicate the added value of transdisciplinary and transnational … research approaches as a pathway to sustainability.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) hosts a biennial International Waters Conference (IWC9 this year), which focuses on international water issues. Sarah Davidson and I were invited to the conference to talk about how ecosystem health report cards could support transboundary water assessments. This year the meeting was held in Marrakech, Morocco, from 5-8 November.