The ocean is our planet’s life support system, and with its health in crisis, its protection can no longer be seen as solely a coastal issue. By engaging individuals and communities that want to be part of the solution, the IOC builds chapters, leads campaigns, and implements programs that protect our watersheds, climate, and ocean. Working on many levels—including through coalition building, dire
ct action, education, community engagement, leadership development, and more—the IOC and its chapters are building community-based ocean conservation constituencies throughout the country. The IOC began as the Colorado Ocean Coalition (COCO) in 2011. Founded by Vicki Nichols Goldstein after a family move to Boulder, CO, the Coalition’s aim was to inspire and empower Coloradans to promote the health of our ocean through education and community involvement. Having spent most of her life working to protect our ocean, Vicki started looking for local organizations that had an inland ocean focus. To her surprise, there were none. She consulted with colleagues and found inspiration for a new initiative, an Inland Ocean Movement. In 2011, COCO became a project under the fiscal sponsorship of The Ocean Foundation based on the premise that you don’t have to see the ocean to protect it. In 2015, COCO began assisting individuals in other inland communities to start chapters—Utah, Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, New York—and in 2017 responded to the growing chapter network and rebranded as the Inland Ocean Coalition. The environmental issues that we work to address—ocean protection, climate change, watershed health, and plastic pollution—are also social issues, often with highly unjust outcomes. It is well established that marginalized communities bear the brunt of environmental harms, and we are working to address these injustices. It is our strong belief that we cannot have a sustainable future on this planet without engaged communities working toward both environmental and social justice, and we have been working with our partners to raise the visibility of the deep need for social justice in the ocean protection and environmental movements as a whole. The health of our ocean and planet impacts everyone—especially marginalized communities—and we cannot protect our ocean without embedding equity into the heart of this movement.
