Ocean Pavilion to Identify Top Five Ocean Issues at COP30

UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography will identify the most pressing issues affecting the ocean at the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30), the United Nations-convened annual meeting that brings nearly all countries in the world to reckon with the threat of climate change.

Most of the ocean does not fall within national jurisdictions. With more than half its area designated as international waters, it has long been neglected in the global climate talks that began in 1995, but the leading role it plays in controlling weather and sustaining life on Earth has brought it to the fore of negotiations in the past decade.

COP negotiation texts still seldom mention ocean protection and management explicitly, but Scripps Oceanography researchers identified the Top Five Ocean Action Items to Watch at COP30. These items align with the COP30 Action Agenda, a framework established by the host country to accelerate the implementation of climate solutions across sectors, as well as the Belém Ocean Declaration, developed by the Ocean Pavilion partners to outline concrete actions needed to safeguard the ocean and integrate ocean solutions into global climate strategies. Researchers will detail the items in a Nov. 12 presentation at the Ocean Pavilion, located in the Blue Zone of the conference venue in Belém, Brazil. 

“The ocean has absorbed 30% of human-driven carbon dioxide emissions and 90% of the excess heat associated with those emissions, buffering us from the worst impacts of climate change,” said panel leader Kerstin Bergentz, a Scripps PhD candidate in physical oceanography. “But that capacity is not infinite. Rising temperatures, sea-level rise and acidification now threaten marine life and the billions who depend on the ocean for food and livelihoods. A healthy ocean is essential for a sustainable future, yet it remains underrepresented in the global climate agenda. This COP is being designated as ‘the implementation COP,’ where the focus is on actually translating climate commitments into action, and it's our hope to see the ocean and blue climate solutions at the center of that action.”

The presentation, given by six graduate students from a range of disciplines at Scripps, presents the following Top Five Ocean Action Items to Watch at COP30:

• Continued support for international collaboration and expansion of ocean observations: Global ocean observing systems — from Biogeochemical-Argo to environmental DNA sampling — are essential to reduce uncertainties in understanding of ocean carbon uptake, circulation, and marine ecosystem change, and also to provide the baseline data needed to understand how the ocean responds to future changes and climate change mitigation efforts.
   
• Harnessing the ocean's capacity as part of blue climate solutions: Society needs international collaboration and unified standards for ocean-based carbon removal and climate intervention strategies that must be rigorously tested, transparently monitored and responsibly governed to balance innovation with ecological and ethical safeguards.
   
• Biodiversity, ecosystems and forest-to-ocean connections: Achieving global biodiversity goals requires implementing the 30×30 action plan, having 30% of the world’s ocean be protected by the year 2030, and the UN Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), restoring ecosystems, empowering Indigenous stewardship and tackling pollution to sustain ocean resilience.
   
• Blue finance and investment: Integration of blue carbon in Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, and sustainable funding. Scaling transparent, equitable blue finance through standardized monitoring, reporting and verification of blue carbon credits, blended funding using both government and private resources, and inclusion of marine projects in NDCs can accelerate ocean restoration while ensuring accountability and justice.
   
• Human–ocean connection: Resilience, equity, and coastal community adaptation. Centering communities through Indigenous knowledge, technology sharing and coastal adaptation can strengthen resilience and ensure ocean solutions deliver equitable climate benefits for all.

The presentation is accompanied by an analysis of how countries are including the ocean in the pledges they make to address climate change, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The effort builds on research by Scripps alumna Natalya Gallo, who, in 2017, produced the first comprehensive study of how ocean management is addressed by countries that are part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

At the time, the majority of NDCs mentioned the word “ocean,” but the use was mostly relegated to lists of concerns associated with a changing climate. Few NDCs actually described the value of the ocean as a resource for climate change mitigation and adaptation. 

In the past decade, a range of initiatives have sprouted that focus on blue carbon or marine carbon dioxide removal, among others, but there is still a gap between the capacity and implementation of some of these ocean-based climate solutions. “Still, as these solutions are discussed and put into practice, we need to ensure that we protect marine ecosystems and coastal communities,” Bergentz said. 

As part of a class on global politics and climate change, Scripps Oceanography graduate students created an analysis on the prevalence of ocean mentions in NDCs this year compared to 2017. They found that mentions have increased more than fourfold. Additionally, they counted nearly 10,000 uses of terms related to the ocean such as “sea level”, “fisheries”, “mangrove”, “coral” and others that are incorporated into proposed or operational plans introduced by various countries to the negotiation. 

Topics such as more renewable energy from ocean waves and wind are increasingly being discussed along with building early warning systems to protect coasts from destructive storms, said Scripps geologist Richard Norris, who directed the analysis. 

“A big need asked for by many countries is finance to build ocean climate solutions. Countries also comment on the need for a transparent, effective marine carbon market to launch the ‘blue economy’ and create incentives to bury planet-warming gases permanently in the ground,” he said.

“It is clear that countries are rapidly updating their approaches to climate change to include more ocean solutions,” Norris added. “Fortunately, countries are also learning from each other about what works. Nearly half of all mentions of the ocean refer to specific plans for how nations will respond to climate change. Those concrete plans are how we will eventually solve the climate crisis.”