Dr. Arvind Kumar*
Shouldn’t the negotiations held during the Conference of the Parties meetings present an opportunity to adapt existing agreements to better capture topics of rising importance to both biodiversity and climate change, such as ocean carbon protection? A substantial opportunity exists now for a joint effort to expand the basis for integrated climate and biodiversity governance. This could deliver necessary steps toward developing policies to safeguard ocean carbon as it is important to remember that the ocean binds us all together.
The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2021) reached a consensus that conditions in Earth’s oceans are changing faster than at any other point in the previous 65 million years. As a result, significant modifications in ocean systems have started to take place, which will have negative effects on geophysical, ecological, and societal systems. For instance, the Indian Ocean modifies the local temperature and weather over that continent. Here, a number of oceanic and atmospheric mechanisms control the Indian monsoon, which sustains a variety of habitats and crops. Recent research, however, demonstrate that climate change is currently changing the Indian Ocean’s dynamics. Monsoonal rains in central India are being lessened by heat waves in the Indian Ocean, and the rapid warming of the ocean’s northern sections is exacerbating storms.
2022 has been named ‘the Super Year of the Ocean’, with a key number of breakthroughs on ocean-climate action: in March, the UN Environment Assembly agreed to begin negotiations for a binding global treaty to end plastic pollution, and at the UN-Ocean Conference in Lisbon in June, governments collectively agreed to scale up science-based and innovative actions to address the ocean emergency.
Oceans feed us, regulate our climate, and generate most of the oxygen we breathe. They underpin key sectors of the economy such as tourism and fisheries. And they harbour biodiversity from whales to plankton in habitats from sun-lit reefs to polar oceans. Despite their importance, oceans and coasts face unprecedented threats. Millions of tons of plastic waste are entering the world’s oceans and harming creatures including seabirds, turtles and crabs. Climate change is damaging coral reefs and other key ecosystems. People are cutting too much wood from mangroves and clearing them for fish farms and other activities. Overfishing is threatening the stability of fish stocks, nutrient pollution is contributing to the creation of dead zones, and nearly 80 per cent of the world’s wastewater is discharged without treatment. Oceans play a critical role in regulating the climate, but how healthy are our oceans today and what kind of impact is climate change having?
Restoring oceans and coastlines means reducing the pressure on these ecosystems so they can recover naturally and also by re-seeding or transplanting key species. It also means understanding how to make both ecosystems and communities more resilient in the face of global climate change. For instance, governments and communities need to make fishing sustainable; pollutants must be treated before they reach the ocean and solid waste like plastics kept out completely. Growing coastal cities should protect, not replace, coastal ecosystems, coral reefs, mangroves and sea grasses must be carefully managed and actively restored so that oceans continue to support billions of livelihoods globally.
For good reason, discussions about the relationship between the ocean and climate change and resultant impacts on biodiversity have mostly centered on catastrophic effects so far. The oceans eventually absorb around 90% of the extra heat that atmospheric greenhouse gases retain. In fact, it is estimated that between 1993 and 2010, thermal expansion increased sea levels by an average of 1.1 millimeters each year, which accounts for a large portion of the overall rise we have observed. Additionally, warmer water affects the atmosphere above it. Less carbon dioxide can be dissolved by warmer water, thus more will remain in the atmosphere and hasten global warming. Additionally, CO2 reacts to produce carbonic acid, which is relatively weak yet sufficient to change the pH of seawater, which is naturally alkaline. The average pH of the top layer of the ocean is thought to have dropped from roughly 8.2 to 8.1 due to dissolved carbon dioxide during the industrial revolution (7 is neutral). For shellfish and other marine life that builds their shells and exoskeletons from the mineral calcium carbonate, the increase in acidity is particularly bad news. Particularly vulnerable is coral. Experiments on a tiny section of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia found that increasing the pH to pre-industrial levels and artificially lowering the seawater carbon dioxide level increased coral calcification by 7%.
Sea ice, which emerges each arctic winter when saltwater freezes, is likewise melting and shrinking more and more every summer. Studies suggest that many of the 25,000 polar bears thought to still survive in the Arctic are in trouble, despite the fact that melting of this ice has little effect on sea levels. Ocean creatures rely on oxygen dissolved in seawater, just as we breathe it from the atmosphere. But climate change is gradually draining oxygen from the seas: about 1-2% is thought to have been lost from 1960 to 2010, and that could rise to 4% by 2100. There are several reasons. Warmer water can hold less of the gas, while disruption to ocean currents limits the amount of oxygen transported from the surface to the depths. A growing problem occurs when the fertilizer and other nutrients added to agricultural soils drain into rivers and eventually get dumped into coastal waters. Climate change has an impact on marine life, which already faces threats from pollution and exploitation, ranging from huge fish to cyanobacteria. Some marine species may merely migrate when seas warm and currents change, for example, toward the cooler waters of the poles. The species that depend on them, such as fish hunting for zooplankton and people trying to catch tuna, are affected by these changes in distribution. Species that have already been damaged by acidification and oxygen deprivation are especially susceptible to stress from shifting supplies. It is challenging to foresee changes to intricate and interrelated food web systems.
The shipping sector would be the world’s eighth largest emitter if it were a country hence should be decarbonized. Offshore renewable energy should be scaled up, which has the potential to cut up to approximately 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year in 2050 if offshore renewable energy displaces coal-fired power. Protection and restoration of blue carbon ecosystems should be prioritized—such as salt marshes, sea grass meadows, and mangrove forests—which can sequester as much as five times the carbon as terrestrial forests per unit area while protecting coastlines from climate impacts and supporting biodiversity. There is now a growing movement to leverage the power of ocean-based climate solutions. Major initiatives must be planned by all nations to make 2023 a watershed year for ocean conservation, as well as for healthier societies and a cleaner environment.
The ongoing discussions at CBD COP15 are highlighting how effective capacity-building empowers countries to better manage their marine biodiversity and benefit from the services they provide, also supporting the achievement of global goals and targets for biodiversity. Nearly all international environmental agreements and governance frameworks recognize the challenges as well as the rewards of capacity development, and a range of initiatives has been put in place over the years to try and bridge the gap between the aspirations of internationally agreed targets and their implementation at regional, national and community levels. While these efforts have delivered a range of benefits – including access to global datasets, case studies of lessons learned and best practice, mentoring opportunities and partnerships, and additional training resources have often been disconnected, fragmented or overlapping in many ways, reducing the overall impact of these efforts. Progress on ocean conservation ultimately depends on political will, just like with climate action on land. Global policy goals for halting biodiversity loss and climate change depend on each other to be successful. Marine biodiversity and climate change are intertwined through food webs that cycle and transport carbon and contribute to carbon sequestration. Yet, biodiversity conservation and fisheries management seldom explicitly include ocean carbon transport and sequestration. In order to effectively manage and govern human activities that affect carbon cycling and sequestration, biodiversity and climate agreements need to address both biodiversity and climate issues. Maintaining the integrity of marine biodiversity and marine carbon sequestration processes lies at the heart of climate governance and ocean management for a sustainable planet.
*President, India Water Foundation
