Apart from the approval of the new governance agreement, VLIZ was able to record a lot of other achievements in 2021. On 1 January, the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development was officially launched and the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is the first VLIZ initiative to be formally recognised as an Ocean Decade action.
In addition, VLIZ has strengthened the interactions within the Flemish marine science and innovation ecosystem, which includes actors from both Flemish knowledge institutions and the private sector. Just like VLIZ itself, the entire marine scientific community has shown strong growth and increased visibility over the past years.
Other realisations of the past year are (1) the 'Integrated Carbon Observation System' (ICOS) and the activities that VLIZ rolls out in this, which have reached a mature operational phase; (2) the large number of policy informing briefs that implement research results in marine and coastal policy matters (a.o. on climate, recreational fisheries and marine litter); (3) the innovative research into the link between the ocean and human health, as a result of which VLIZ is involving a new interdisciplinary group of scientists in its work; (4) the development of the VLIZ Marine Robotics Centre into a knowledge hub for 'marine autonomous systems'; (5) the pioneering role of VLIZ in the field of marine citizen science, both on the local and international level; (6) the visit of several prominent people to VLIZ and the Marine Station Ostend; (7) the digital 20th anniversary edition of the VLIZ Marine Science Day, and (8) the importance that VLIZ attaches to human capital and diversity as a basis for its scientific successes.
In the 'Highlights' section of this yearbook, we highlight some of these achievements. Please note that this is only a fragmentary representation of our entire operation.
Both the
Dutch and the
English version of the yearbook can be consulted digitally (pdf) via the
VLIZ-website.
