Emma Verling has over 20 years experience in marine research and policy and is  currently a Research Fellow in the Sustainability Institute. She coordinates Marine SABRES a four-year, Horizon Europe funded project, which will co-design and test a Simple Social Ecological Systems approach to rapidly enable and upscale Ecosystem Based Management across Europe and beyond. Marine SABRES is a consortium of 22 partners from 11 countries across Europe working to set European marine management on a course to reverse biodiversity decline by integrating sustainable ecosystems and a resilient blue economy. The project also aims to enable managers to make sustainable decisions, empower citizens to engage with marine biodiversity conservation and promote sustainable development and in coastal and marine sectors.

Emma also leads UCC's contribution to the MPA LIFE project, co-funded by the European Union's LIFE Programme and the Department of Climate, Energy and Environment. The project aims at significantly expanding Ireland’s network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to reach a target of 30% coverage of the maritime area by 2030. Its core goal is to make a major contribution to protecting, conserving and enabling the recovery of Ireland’s marine ecosystems, thereby supporting the achievement of Good Environmental Status in our marine environment. The project is set to span nine year up to 2033 and it will examine and develop area-based conservation measures for a wide range of vulnerable species, habitats, and other sensitive features that need protection based on current knowledge and scientific evidence. Emma leads the work to ensure the project is developed and delivered with the active engagement and participation of stakeholders and citizens. This will ensure a robust and meaningful process for the designation and management of MPAs in Ireland.

Background

Emma is a graduate of UCC (BSc, PhD) and is a Research Fellow at the Sustainability Institute. She has a background in Marine Ecology and Marine Policy and spent much of her career working in research and policy settings in the USA and the UK. Emma spent three years as a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC working on the management of Non-Indigenous Species transfer via the shipping industry. She subsequently went on to spend ten years working in the Marine Team at JNCC (Joint Nature Conservation Committee), the statutory nature conservation advisor to the UK Government. During that time, she specialised in developing the science to advise on the implementation of EU directives in the UK, in particular the Habitats Directive. This included technical work to identify offshore Special Areas of Conservation, the completion of Favourable Conservation Status assessments for marine habitats and the analysis of habitat data to create habitat maps for the UK waters. Laterally her work at JNCC focused on the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, for which she worked closely with the research and statutory community in the UK in the development of monitoring advice for UK government.

Since joining UCC, Emma has managed the European Commission funded RAGES (Risk Based Approaches to Good Environmental Status) project. She was also responsible for the development of technical work within the project in relation to underwater noise (Descriptor 11 of the MSFD). She led the work within the project to develop ways in which Risk-Based Approaches can be effectively used to consider the impacts of continuous underwater noise in European waters. Emma has also worked on both the IMPACT and SAFEWave projects, focussing on the potential environmental impacts of wave energy converters as well as the use of Risk-based approaches in the consenting process for such devices.  Emma was the Demonstration Area Lead on the Horizon Europe funded A-A Agora Project, which supported the ambitious targets set in the European Commission Mission to “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030”  to meet the requirements on innovative and transformative change.