 Welcome back. Our final panel is on cultural heritage protection in the maritime environment. As a reminder, all conference materials are available for download at the bottom of the events page. There's an agenda and the full bios of everyone who has participated. We will go straight into our final panel for today. It is my great pleasure to welcome back Dr. Chris just Barrow is moderator for this panel. He is a formal naval officer, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and currently a professor in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval War College. He serves as the Jerome Levy chair of economic geography. I'm your geographer and archaeologist with over 25 years of experience specializing in environmental security, cultural heritage protection, and African and Asian regional geography and transnational security issues. As my co organizer, this panel in particular was his priority for the entire event. And I'm really looking forward to the selection of speakers he has for it. Dr. Just Barrow. I invite you to commence your panel. Good morning and thank you Andrea. So for our last panel, we'll look at issues of exploitation and protection of cultural heritage in the maritime domain. As we heard from our keynote speaker there are a variety of areas where maritime cultural heritage issues intersect with human security issues at sea as well as broader strategic issues. And with human security in general attention to it at sea has lagged behind that of on land but progress is being made and as you'll see we have speakers from three allied navies who will look at different angles of the problem and hopefully give us a sense of where things are going. Our first speaker is commander Andy chill of the Royal Navy. He's a naval commando specializing in human trade analysis and training and mentoring of local forces. He also holds master's degrees from the London School of Economics and Kings College London. Currently he's leading the Royal Navy's contributions to the UK's defense human security project so without further ado I'll turn it over to Andy. Thanks very much Chris I'm just going to share my screen you let me know when you can see and hear me okay. Good morning and good afternoon to everybody who's attending it's been a real pleasure listening in and I've learned a lot. These sort of events are really critical to sort of cooperation but also to our national development in this area. For this panel I'm really pleased to be going first, as I can be a bit of a scene set to try and situate where cultural property sits within human security for the Royal Navy. Also I'm most definitely the least venerable of the panel speakers so you'll forgive me my academically lightweight points but I'll stick to the representation of the process of applying human security themes within an operational level battle staff within a navy. So very briefly to describe the UK journey and as a few other contributors have already mentioned, we've been, we've been through this process of taking a fairly nebulous academic concept of complimentary freedoms and dependencies, how that links to instabilities and then had to process those through both UN and NATO interpretations with their own lenses to the start of the UK human security agenda, including cultural property, which for the UK commenced really with the 2000 Security Council Resolution on Women, Peace and Security because the UK holds the pen for that and it remains a priority agenda item for our foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. But there's more to be understood about vulnerabilities of cultures as everybody here knows you know the values and under representation of the values of cultures and the under representation of women and children is symptomatic of other fragilities and we're coming along on this ride of sort of exploring further where the fault lines lie within communities and where that influences military operations where military operations influence that. So, where we're at now in the UK, having taken this sort of ponderous walk since 2000, I would apologize for this slide but the kind of the complexities the point we've, I've stolen, by the way this grid here from an army colleague, but we've, we've taken the challenges of interpreting a range of concepts and trying to set on something that works for us so it has to meet our UN NATO and partnership obligations. So we're going to go down that process now with this year sees the second policy addition for human security, describing a broad umbrella term, which has allowed us to identify how we interpret those seven factors plus one because we've added in information security, and how we've aligned those with the NATO cross cutting themes, but is also sovereign to us and works with our sovereign operations. And also what will in terms of policy that's great so we've got we've got fairly mature policy now, but we do still need to, there's a lot more work that needs to be done to understand how we apply that. It's yet to be human security and cultural property protection cultural vulnerabilities are yet to be standard vernacular at the operational level. Basically, there's an imperative to get on with it which is, which is great and quite right to, but what that means is that we're sort of retrospectively building our understanding and our, you know, there's all important real case studies in vignettes that help us explain tactical application of human security with building those through existing operations and those the most simplest way of doing that for us has been predominantly through the sort of mission imperative of Afghanistan, more recently recently years Afghanistan and then operations that we have in Mali for example, and unless so some of the maritime examples because they, they are sort of in perpetuity running. So, so the Navy doesn't yet have quite such a clear understanding but it but it's growing. The argument I would make is, is that we would probably put issues such as children and armed conflict protection civilians sex and gender based violence, whilst absolutely critical to the international community don't mean so much to a cohort of mariners for example delivering our strategic deterrence. But those self same submariners or crews of the new carrier strike groups that we send out on an annual basis are still contributing to human security via that sort of maritime security that we've already been talking about. And they have therefore opportunities to enhance the overall stability, and that's that may be more likely to be through cases of human trafficking as we just discussed sexual exploitation and abuse and enhancing the understanding of what that actually means. And what brings us here today, or to this panel I should say is how issues of cultural property protection matter in the maritime. So trying to situate then human security in the maritime domain and with a maritime force, we have a fairly well established paradigm which we are now pushing to broaden. And that involves answering a number of questions. What risks and opportunities live for maritime in the cultural narrative and concept of individual vulnerabilities and community vulnerabilities. What types of operations matter most and how do they matter. And whilst I take a couple of speakers points from yesterday about the distinction between kinetic operations and then the everything else sort of pre and post kinetic, where human security perhaps is more relevant. Disaster relief operations being a really, really sort of central target in that sense, but there are more ways that we could understand human security and cultural property. Underwater heritage and cultural property is a really good demonstration of that in fact. So, the UK going through sort of a defense transformation program, some of the modern warfare themes, such as the total deterrence concept modern deterrence concepts and return to strategic commando rating. All bring issues of cultural respect understanding protection, as well as concepts of UK cultural vulnerabilities to the four. And the hate convention obliges us to know about cultural property. And there's one of my, one of my colleagues he knows a lot more about cultural property than me, often puts it decisions of what to break and what not to break and how we could avoid breaking things but but also where does cultural property sit in the battle for sub threshold advantage. And what does it imply for items of sort of cultural totems and items of high value. So on the left of our, we could say that we start with traditional protection of UK cultural property within territorial waters where the task is clear, relatively, but it's left to a random mix of UK enforcement agencies, and then more problematically in international waters, where the different laws or lack of and patchy application of the uncloss all make the issue more problematic. Our resources and advocates are spread thin. So cultural property of the UK state such as warships may translate to vulnerabilities perhaps. And towards the right of our can perhaps more innovatively acknowledging the, the outstanding work by the Royal Canadian Navy in this area is understanding the role of the cultural property is totally points in issues of strategic narrative and establishing where that sits in the information campaigns of our adversaries, where is it being exploited within sub threshold disruption. And the atomic steel for example in the South China Seas means that we're losing cultural artifacts ostensibly due to economic pressures. But actually, this this loss suits the wider narrative of an of a regional hegemon. So today, Australian dutch and I think that US Java sea wrecks are now almost all gone and closer to home, and in keen focus for a Navy which is about to take over the maritime NATO response force duty in January. We're well aware that in the Baltic, there are German wrecks being looked at in inverted commas by various diving groups with nationalist associations. So the journey there with human security and cultural property is a really fundamental issue of cultural sensitivity has brought us to the point of trying now to operationalize human security with some tactical level doctrine and it's time really for us to get writing which is where as I said at the start these collaborations and partnerships so valuable so thank you everybody's thoughts. I think we need to find his way more into the Royal Navy DNA it is getting there, and a better understanding of what we can do to a further sorry stories like that of HMS repulse shown here on the left, and then shown on the right, or not shown as it's steadily being taken from us by salvages and looters from its final resting place and the resting place of hundreds of British sailors. And that's, that's what I have to really start the conversation. I'd be delighted to join into the panel. Thank you. I have commander ponos trip and take us from the Hellenic Navy, who, in addition to be in a surface officer with command at sea experience is also a author and cultural heritage researcher and specialist he's presently serving as a staff officer in the Department of Information and Environmental Protection for the Hellenic Republic's Ministry of Defense. So, on us. Yes, Chris. Thank you very much for presenting me. I want to thank a US neighbor world college and Andrea for the invitation. It's, it's a privilege and fills me with honor. I've heard, you know, I have a disclaimer also that this presentation presents my perspective for the underwater heritage of Hellenic Navy. And having heard all these presentations, the day yesterday and today reminds me, reminds me just a moment. Oh, I can. Okay, it reminds me what the world is they said our heritage and ideas are called the standards that things we live by and teach our children are preserved or diminished by how freely we've changed ideas and feelings and this is what we are doing now. To give you another perspective of protection of cultural heritage is what your use a fairies said to one of the most important reports of the 20th century. I think a piece from the past is likely raising a piece from the future. I have an holistic approach, shaping our mindset on both cultural heritage and natural. It's the basic perception that cultural heritage and nature viewed viewed as indivisible and not revolutionary. Let's have a quick peek here in the slide that you can see Greece, both nature and culture environment. We have forty four six areas in Greece that belongs to Natura 2000 network together with the important marine mammal areas and we have also the other water heritage of Hellenic Navy the milestone starts in 1953 where the state of degree that was issued defines that the ownership of all shipwrecks of warships and then the other is given to the shareholding Navy's fun. We have war materials such as warplanes as I said, helmets, tanks, whatever is given to the shareholding Navy's funds, which is a legal entity subject to public law and that is the supervision of the Hellenic Ministry of National Defense via the Hellenic Navy general staff. And each aim is the development and decrement of the funds property property, movable and the movable. The second milestone in 2002 is the law about antiquities and the cultural heritage in general, which is the most comprehensive and methodical law legislation on archaeological matters. And then we have one ministerial decision that changed everything in 2003 and following the minister of cultural decision the Rex we mentioned before the date of seeking of which and the page the decision by 50 years were designated as cultural asset so all the other water heritage of Hellenic Navy is a cultural asset to see what is a cultural asset. It's the touchable evidence of the existence of man and of his individual and collective activities comes under the definition of cultural assets. However, those wrecks reveal to us acts of courage and facts that significantly change the course of history. So I will start saying that all the actions taken by the Hellenic Navy comes from the new environment, not the new revised environmental energy climate change adaptation policy of Hellenic Ministry of National Defense, where you can download it through the site green .gr. Over there the fields of interest is all these that are big in the slide but I will stay only in cultural heritage, where we have to secure the integrity of locations with historical and cultural heritage from military activities. We have to leave the possible impact on monuments during the planning and execution stage of works and activities, serving the aims of national defense, promote after proper recording restoration and maintenance the means buildings and areas of historical and cultural importance under the ownership of the armed forces. We have to inform all the, we have to inform about all the areas of historical and cultural importance in order to ensure that military operations can be carried out with the least possible damage to the historical and natural environment. So the top priority for Hellenic Ministry of National Defense is to map the areas of historical and cultural importance in all pre-existing electronic products of the Hellenic military geographical service, and the Hellenic military geographical service, thus providing detailed information about protected areas of national, European and global importance to all potential users. practitioners and we need to know, we need to use a tool to see where we are going, so the notical charts are the unique tools that connect people without natural and cultural heritage. These are the means that they can influence not only the operational officers that they're working on operations but also the public. These are the means of implementing the relevant administrative decisions facilitating the work of the Hellenic Coast Guard, preventing the execution of illegal activities such as illegally retrieval of objects from domestic or international antiquities ganks. And let's see the wrecks now from a different, we have to see the wrecks from a different perspective because as I said before, those wrecks reveal to us acts of courage and facts that significantly change the course of history. This heritage is of great importance for forming our identity, our historical continuity and the self-determination within the historical becoming. This legacy evokes great emotions and linked to national, regional and local tradition or intouchable heritage which is passed down from generation to generation providing a sense of identity and continuity and thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. This heritage constitutes the bridge that connects the elements of cultural heritage between the past and the present and of course it is an undeniable value that strengthens the cultural identity of our society. We know of course that the climate is changing and this is a challenge and the challenge is that the impacts are not always visible to us. Every challenge of course is an opportunity. Talking about challenges, talking about the possible impact of climate change on other water heritage and we are talking about the second world war one and two naval vessels. Most of these ships are made of rusting metal, steel, hauled armaments, vast quantities of oil, etc. and the temperature, the increasing of temperature, salinity and of course acidification change the way that changes the sea makes it hotter and more acidic and of course shipwrecks are deteriorating and maybe loss of cultural heritage, environmental disaster is inevitable. So we have an initiated Hellenic Minister of National Defence together with Ecositi and the DRS Hotel University of Thessaloniki. We have a two-year project started one month ago. The acronym is Monuments and Risk and has to do with the climate change and the effects upon those heritage sites and another MOU between Hellenic Ministry of National Defence and the IS Hotel University of Thessaloniki has to do in particular with documentation of all these shipwrecks lying down in the Hellenic seas due to an emerging need for Hellenic Navy to study and preserve its submerged cultural resources. Discovering and mapping this part of our naval heritage and history can help us rediscover ourselves because at the end, culture is not the privilege of only one but it is open and has to be open to everyone. Being proactive is not enough. If the box is nearby then it is still an obstacle to open thinking. We've heard thinking beyond the obvious it's a way to move forward but I strongly believe that we have to think the obvious because over there we can fight the solution. We have to think simple. Of course we need to join effort, cooperation, communication and public outreach with public sectors, private sectors, universities, diving community and of course nations. Two key points is that we have to educate and develop the next generation adaptable leaders in order to fully understand the complexity and what is culture for us. We have also to enhance and promote military-open science meaning that we have to involve one forces in general in scientific endeavor that generates new knowledge and deeper understanding. Of course a collaboration between Sainte and Saint-Anne forces and navies who are concerned and motivated to make a difference anyone can participate. We have to use the same protocol with the scientists so data can be combined and be high quality and of course as yesterday a lot of panelists said we have to share data to which the public as well as the scientists can have access. That concludes my briefing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. You managed to fit a lot of big themes and a small presentation so that is a work of art and particularly appreciate you hitting some of the bigger themes of the conference in terms of the need for militaries to engage with communities which is not necessarily our natural habit as well as bringing the environmental dimension into the discussion. So we have all our panelists on board now so let's start some questions and please keep sending them into the chat. First question is for Andy is what what is the primary purpose of the UK's human security project? Is it is it policy and how does it aim to translate into the operational arena? Very good question. It's the second iteration of the policy that makes that clear actually having operated on one for a couple of years somebody thought it'd be worth articulating what it's all for. I won't remember what it is verbatim but it's effectively this is about better operational outcomes particularly in this sort of era of multi-domain integration and the UK's integrated review that we've just been through. It's not about improving the military operation it's about improving the influence and effect that we have using every lever. So the overall outcome is a better operation and better effect overseas and better defensive of what we have as UK sovereign assets but the trick is convincing every lever of power that they have to understand each other's motivations because this is human security is of everything I've looked at and I'm sure there'll be people that agree of every concept of security and sort of conceptual debate we've had this is probably one of the least defined or the most pan-government concepts that we've come across. So it's not just a case of convincing defence what they need to achieve it's convincing defence how they need to support the foreign office and the Department for Trade and the Department for Transport and the Department of International Development as well and vice versa but better operational outcome in one line. Great thank you a related question would be you know in terms of if we look at the informational aspect of the problem you know in terms of what how navies can prepare to to work in this environment what do they need you know is it just have concepts in doctrine is it new new types of people or new capabilities and you know what what other agencies should should be involved because it's something that clearly involves navies but it's sort of out of the you know realm of things that navies traditionally do and this is for all the panelists. Can I answer first can I try to answer first please I totally agree first of all with what Commander Andrew said or Andrew let's say but I think it's a very difficult problem for the defence to solve because we are dealing with a situation that we don't know the the potential yet we still we are wondering what climate change what are the climate change impacts first of all of operations so we need to deeply understand what is culture and that is why I said before that we have to change let's say the protocol that we are working for the next leadership because the the practitioners for example in Greece that they are now the commanding officers they are going to be the the leaders in 10 years from now on and those leaders they have to to be adaptable they they need to understand in order to in order to take the the best decision and we are talking about the decision making process I think it's a very difficult situation now it's evolving and first of all I think that we we need to change the way that the leaders are thinking it needs a general overview of the situation and it needs to have a deeper understanding I mean we need to understand what biodiversity for example means we need to understand what one degree Celsius means in when we are operating with submarines that is that going to affect us on transmission loss for example can this have an effect and affect an impact on my operation so great thank you Andy or Dan do you have anything well I mean I would add in a sort of a quite procedural problem that we're facing in the UK at the moment is that a sort of hinted asset in the presentation for the for navies to be able to do something about this the strategic demand signal has to be explicit because we we deploy on operations of maritime security or disaster relief or power projection defense engagement whatever the vernacular is in your respective country but within that you know we don't we don't have that freedom of movement to just interpret human security objectives as we go and it's not the people are reversed to it but it's just not in the specified tasks and it's and it's not yet implied strongly enough so we need integration with partners with international partners to make explicit requests that can be fed in you know over to course of time and that takes a while to get there which I believe it will but be nice if it's a bit faster thank you if Daniel yes for that the integration I will give you a very simple example a very simple example I mean if the effort rate of underwater antiquities in Greece doesn't inform me about the underwater sites in order to to place them in the nautical charts then probably Andrew with his vessel is going to anchor above the romanian gallery and destroy the monument it's the simple way you know to think so the integration the integration means that not only us as militaries has to have to understand how the other ministries work but the other ministries need to know what means we have in order to help them to influence via nautical charts for example or geographical charts about the monuments it's a very simple example great thank you um and so it's you know it's challenging in our own waters but many countries seem to have at least domestic structures to start doing these things but it's much more complicated when we're talking overseas and in international waters and contested spaces uh two questions that are related so I'll put them together mainly for Andy and Dan first do you have any other examples of exploitation of maritime cultural heritage by actors like Russia and China and also why are the java sea wrecks so valuable and what might some of the strategic or geopolitical implications be of this kind of activity um I you know I'm noting the question in the in the sidebar there uh you know what what do we gain um I think if you talk about cultural heritage as an isolated um as an isolated example uh other than sort of the the the moral you know the moral issue it it's hard on its own perhaps to to understand other than there's an opportunity and to get to go on the front foot before there's sort of an information campaign against us but also heritage is just another part of wider cultural discussion and of course that is key sort of that's the key battleground and a lot of the whatever you want to call it hybrid activity or sub threshold activities so heritage is just one component the other component is diaspora rights you know and and um other anything that is ostensibly of value to a group is something that can be contested now and so underwater underwater heritage is is just one of those angles and we don't uh I would suggest that it doesn't make it the the key battleground but it's one of them and we need to understand what that means before it becomes something that is exploited against us uh Chris may yes yes okay I will try also to answer the questions that I have seen in in the chat so what we gain we gain our identity I mean I will have to reply with a question why do we have to save acropolis monument and why not try to save the underwater heritage is a part of our culture and with the project I mentioned before monuments and trees we combine together both environmental information in the shipwreck and also what is the situation of the shipwreck in order to to try to to preserve it because one way or another those monuments are open to the public with some restrictions so first of all we need to show to the public to the diving community because we are talking about economics that we are dealing with also with our identity so I believe we gain a lot of things also we gain ourselves because we have a deeper understanding of our understanding of our you know battles that we have given and it's the only way to move forward great thank you all for those answers yeah there's you know a need to take a multi-faceted look at these problems there's the strategic angle which you know is really not about wrecks or not but about controlling terrain basically and winning there's the identity issues the economic issues I mean cultural tourism is is about the biggest sector of tourism and underwater tourism can be particularly high value so if it's managed correctly there is a financial as well as identity incentives there's also in terms of post-conflict rehabilitation of combatants we have projects where for example U.S. special operations veterans are being trained in underwater archaeology both as part of recovery process from combat but also to to train a new post-military skill so it's a very big issue if you look at all the pieces another question we have for Panos is the the reserves that Greece has set up that are both environmental and heritage protected areas that seems to be an interesting model that can be applied more broadly around the world has there been any cooperation with Greece and other countries in developing these type of sanctuaries it's something that started a few years ago and of course we have to to work with other nations for this and that panel is making a good work to achieve this because it helps us to come to know people from other nations and discuss it and to see what other nations are doing and help us to work better in a more efficient way it's it's a very difficult situation and you know the most important thing is to to understand what is a culture okay the most important issue great thank you are there any more questions or anything that the panelists would like to add that they didn't get a chance to to address previously okay good well we are near the the end of the session so thank you all for your your presentations and answers it's obviously a big area that more work is needed on just a couple comments before I turn it back to Andrea first you know thanks to of course again the naval war college foundation that sponsors the levy chair in this conference and the president of naval war colleges animal chat fields support for this event of course thanks for everybody who helped support and participate in the event and lastly because there's nobody else to say it but thank you to Andrea whose not only was this her idea but her efforts were fairly hurtfully and you might have guessed as much by the thousand emails you probably all got but that's just the tip of the iceberg and not only is she organizing this conference but this is our busiest time of year for teaching in our department all while being a virtual detaily to the pentagon so thank you Andrea and get some sleep this weekend thank you chris i'd like to thank all of the final panelists chris andy and panos what a fantastic panel that really brought our whole event full circle you focused on uk and kind of went back to that very large human security lens and i'm through thoroughly impressed that you have a dedicated human security function and then we went through the in-depth discussion about cultural heritage and the importance of preserving our history during this event we sought to expand the concept of human security into the maritime environment to initiate a proactive strategic thought on these issues we did this by asking all our panels to explore how their specific human security topic affected the maritime strategic environment and what it meant for navies and coast guards my favorite component is always learning about how navies and coast guards are thinking through their operational policy and force options this is a very solutions-oriented approach and we can all learn from each other in looking at this as you can see from the speakers we carefully assembled a mix of scholars and practitioners as well as admirals and senior officers directly working on these issues in their respective countries this event started with an idea in my head when i saw militaries operationalizing the human security concept but overlooking the maritime component it has been wonderful bringing this idea to chris and collaborating with the support of the levy chair in economic geography to make this happen by being virtual we were able to bring together experts from around the world and record the event for many more to access it in the future i truly appreciate everyone's participation and your interest in the subject again i'd like to thank all the speakers and moderators for their participation today as well as our special events team of charlotte and carolin public affairs office media services alumni programs and the members of our climate and human security team josh vagan kurtis bell and michael bush who collaborated and supported this event well i was on camera it took a large team to deliver this event today and i couldn't have done it without them all thank you for joining us stay safe everyone this concludes our virtual conference on human security in the maritime environment