At Climate Week, Chile and the United Kingdom Commit to Ocean-Based Action Plans Ahead of COP30

Officials from the United Kingdom and Chile said at a Climate Week NYC forum Monday that their governments are committed to promoting ocean-based actions to lower their greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Among the steps under consideration, they said, include a phaseout of offshore oil and gas drilling, efforts to decarbonize shipping, investments in offshore wind and other renewable marine energy, and commitments to enhance sustainable fisheries and conservation of marine ecosystems. 

They spoke at an event sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, the World Resources Institute and the Ocean & Climate Platform, an international alliance of more than 100 organizations that advocate for greater recognition of the ocean’s role in climate regulation. One of the initiatives they support is called the Blue NDC Challenge, launched earlier this year by France and Brazil at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice. 

Under the Paris agreement, nations’ climate action plans are called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The Blue NDC Challenge calls for nations to include ocean solutions in their action plans. In advance of this year’s climate talks in Brazil,  a growing number of countries have joined the challenge, including Brazil, Palau, Australia, Kenya, Mexico and others. The United Kingdom, Chile and Madagascar are the latest countries to announce they will also participate. 

“We have an ambitious target to reduce emissions by 81 percent by 2035 and we know, because of our diverse marine habitats, that the ocean and its coastlines are at the heart of it,” said Mary Creagh, the United Kingdom’s minister for nature. 

Anna-Marie Laura, senior director of climate policy at the Ocean Conservancy, said actions that  protect marine ecosystems and harness their power to produce renewable energy “offer the greatest opportunity for emission reduction to stop climate change and save the ocean.” 

Ocean-Based Climate Solutions 

Scaling up ocean-based climate solutions that are readily available now could reduce the global “emissions gap” by 35 percent by 2050, according to the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, a global initiative led by world leaders from 18 nations committed to sustainably managing 100 percent of their national waters by 2030.

To close the “emissions gap,” governments and other stakeholders must significantly curb their greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a critical threshold that scientists say is crucial to stay below in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. 

For too long, the ocean was left out of policies and discussions aimed at meeting this goal, despite the key role it plays in regulating the global climate, said Janice Searles Jones, Ocean Conservancy’s CEO. 

“The ocean is understudied. It’s under-resourced. It’s underprotected, and it is underappreciated,” she said. “But for the ocean, life on land would already be intolerable.”  The ocean has absorbed 90 percent of our excess heat. 

According to the Paris Agreement, participating parties must submit updated climate action plans  that lay out strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change every five years. So far, countries have completed two rounds of NDC submissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which maintains a public registry of these climate pledges.

In February, countries were asked to submit their third and most ambitious plans, which few did. The deadline was extended to the end of this month. To date, just over 30 countries have submitted their proposals. 

In the second round of NDCs, submitted in 2020, Laura said 70 percent of countries included at least one ocean-based action. Most of these included coastal conservation initiatives focused on protecting carbon-sequestering ecosystems such as mangroves and seagrass meadows. 

Brazil, for instance, has included plans to protect and restore its mangroves and coral reefs in its NDCs, said Marinez Scherer, Brazil’s special envoy for oceans at the upcoming climate summit, COP30. She said she is working to ensure the ocean is not forgotten during the talks in the Amazonian city of Belém, which are expected to focus largely on the conservation of tropical forests. “We are mobilizing society as well, mobilizing the local communities, Indigenous people, private sector, academia, to bring solutions to COP,  to show solutions that are based in the ocean,” Scherer said. She also emphasized that the ocean must be protected to mitigate the impacts of climate change. 

Brazil has announced plans to expand offshore oil and gas production, which some scientists and ocean advocates fear could threaten a unique coral reef ecosystem based where the Amazon River empties into the Atlantic Ocean. 

“We have to stop drilling and we have to stop using fossil fuels,” she said. “We can talk about carbon sink and carbon sequestration, but the amount of carbon that we put in the atmosphere burning fossil fuels is huge, so there is no way we can capture everything.”

In this third and current round of NDCs, Laura from the Ocean Conservancy said advocates want to see increased commitments to reduce such offshore oil and gas operations and invest in the development of more energy sources, such as offshore wind farms.

The United Kingdom has already made significant efforts to expand offshore wind, and will continue to do so as part of its national climate action plan, Creagh said. “We have huge wind resources, and we are now on track to be 100 percent clean power by 2030. That is an amazing achievement for the sixth-largest economy in the world.”

Green Corridors

The Ocean Conservancy is also encouraging countries to develop new technologies and green fuels that can reduce shipping emissions, which could represent 10 percent of global greenhouse gases in the next 25 years if measures are not taken to reduce the industry’s impact. 

“Marine transport is the backbone of global trade, and it tends to burn pretty dirty fuel,” said Jones, the Ocean Conservancy’s CEO. “The  potential for shifting that sector to cleaner fuels, to zero emissions, has huge upsides for the ocean—less air pollution, less water pollution, less underwater noise, and is much better for climate.” 

Establishing “green corridors,” or maritime routes dependent on one or more ports that supply low-carbon fuels is one strategy the Ocean Conservancy advocates countries work towards implementing to help decarbonize the maritime sector. 

Even if 5 percent of the industry could switch to zero-emissions fuels by 2030, the goals of the Paris Agreement would be more likely within reach, according to the Global Maritime Forum and other experts. 

Large-Scale Marine Conservation 

Marine spatial planning—the process of organizing how ocean space is used—is another integral critical climate tool that advocates and some global leaders are pushing for. 

“Marine spatial planning is the key to having a healthy ocean,” Scherer said. 

This involves mapping and allocating different marine areas for various activities, such as  fishing, offshore wind, tourism, and protecting critical habitats, like coral reefs, to help maintain healthy fisheries and protect coastlines from storm surges. 

Brazil’s latest climate action plan, Scherer said, entails efforts to complete comprehensive marine spatial planning for its entire exclusive economic zone, a vast marine area sometimes referred to as the “Blue Amazon” that includes 5.7 million square kilometers of ocean. 

Chile will continue to focus on creating and managing large-scale marine protected areas that limit or prohibit extractive activities like industrial fishing and offshore oil and gas, said Julio Cordano, director of environment, climate change, and oceans at Chile’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Already, Chile has protected more than 40 percent of its national waters, surpassing a global target of protecting 30 percent of all land and seascapes by 2030. The target was established as part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in December 2022. 

Now, Cordano said, “We are trying to see what type of climate benefits we can identify [from these marine protected areas] and measure so we can also justify investing more in those conservation efforts.”