MedCities has recently received the endorsement of the Ocean Decade of United Nations for the Ocean Cities (OC-NET) Programme, an international network coordinated by The Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) and Unitat de Tecnologia Marina (UTM), part of one of the largest research institutes of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). 

The Porgramme is involving the Barcelona City Council, research centers, MedCities and C40 city networks, art organizations and the Spanish Ministry of Science and innovation and Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge to support the goals of the Ocean Decade for sustainable ocean cities.

The initiative will effectively contribute to identify and exploit the « science we need » to transform the cities and going through « ocean that we have » to « the ocean we want », in line with the Ocean Decade slogan and objectives, by providing ocean knowledge and data, scientific and technological capacity, and innovative and transformative solutions.

OC‐NET will be carried out with and for the people, promoting bottom‐up collaboration of all actors and endorsing policy dialogue towards effective evidence-based policies that set the city border well beyond the shoreline.

« Resilience of coastal cities in the face of climate change is a critical challenge for decades to come. it is therefore an excellent development that Ocean Cities will be a part of the first set of endorsed programmes of the UN Decade of Science for Sustainable Development », said Dr Vladimir Ryabinin, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the UN body charged with the task of coordinating the Ocean Decade.

The ultimate goal of OC‐NET is to turn ocean cities into communities permeable to the marine environment, regenerating the coastline as much as possible and enhancing a harmonic community‐land‐ocean connection through mind (science), heart (art) and soul (awareness).