These discussions include lowering sector-specific emissions from ocean industries like shipping and advancing clean energy options such as offshore wind, wave and tidal energy, and floating solar, providing clear examples of how countries can utilize ocean resources to reduce emissions ( Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2019a).Įmploying ‘nature-based solutions’ can also expand our climate response to include natural systems more fully ( IUCN, 2020). The ocean and climate change dialogue convened in 2021 also considered how ocean-based climate solutions can strengthen the global climate response ( SBSTA, 2021). The release of the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate ( IPCC, 2019a), followed closely thereafter by the Chilean Presidency’s focus on oceans at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 25th Conference of Parties, which was dubbed the “Blue COP”, has created buzz around utilizing the ocean as a mitigation tool. Long overlooked, the role of the ocean is receiving increasing focus within the climate policy landscape and there is growing interest in bringing ocean-related policy actions forward as climate solutions ( Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2019b). The urgency of the climate crisis situates significant climate mitigation and adaptation actions very squarely within not only our own lifetimes, but within many institutions’ short-term planning horizons. Efforts to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5☌ above pre-industrial levels – a goal laid out by the Paris Agreement and reinforced by the Glasgow Climate Pact – require a global net anthropogenic CO 2 emissions decline of about 45% from the 2010 level by 2030 and to net zero by 2050 ( IPCC, 2018). The urgency to deeply reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to adapt to a warmer world is overwhelmingly evident in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Reports ( IPCC, 2021 IPCC, 2022), which reinforces that humans have unequivocally altered the atmosphere, land, and ocean. Increasingly dire warnings are being sounded regarding systemic changes across the planet from rising sea levels, melting glaciers, shrinking sea ice, climate-related weather extremes, and irreversible loss of marine ecosystems such as coral reefs ( IPCC, 2019a DeConto et al., 2021). The applicability of blue carbon is then discussed in terms of multiple international policy frameworks, to help individuals and institutions utilize the appropriate framework to reach ocean conservation and climate mitigation goals.Ĭlimate change is the preeminent policy and scientific challenge of this decade. This paper gives context to numerous blue carbon sequestration pathways, quantifying their potential to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and comparing these sequestration pathways to point-source emissions reductions. However, some blue carbon interventions may not be suitable as a climate mitigation response and better suited for other policy instruments such as those targeted toward biodiversity conservation. For mitigation policies that seek to implement management actions that drawdown carbon, ecosystem sequestration and emissions must be measurable across temporal and spatial scales, and management must be practical leading to improved sequestration and avoided emissions. The protection and restoration of specific ocean ecosystems can form part of a climate response within climate mitigation policies such as Nationally Determined Contributions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Blue carbon, the carbon captured and stored by marine and coastal ecosystems and species, offers potential as a “nature-based solution” to climate change. The ocean is gaining prominence in climate change policy circles as a tool for addressing the climate crisis.

7Integrative Ecophysiology, Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany.

6Department of Strategy and International Affairs, CREAF (Centre for Research on Ecology and Forestry Applications), Barcelona, Spain.

5School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States.

4Environment Department, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Washington, DC, United States.3GreenCollar, International Projects, Chicago, IL, United States.

2Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States.1Energy and Environment Department, Center for American Progress, Washington, DC, United States.Baez 4, Shirley Leung 5, Alicia Pérez-Porro 6 and Elvira Poloczanska 7 Christianson 1*, Anna Cabré 2, Blanca Bernal 3, Stacy K.

Carbon sequestration rate