Including oceans in climate talks remains piecemeal and inconsistent, at best
To date, archipelagic Southeast Asian and South Pacific island countries, including Australia, have led the way in seeking to include oceans as part of all discussions regarding climate change challenges and solutions.
This is understandable. With their surrounding ocean territories greater than their land mass, these island states are already experiencing the impacts of our changing climate. But this isn’t just a regional concern. Oceans cover more than 70% of our planet, so why aren’t they central to climate talks?
Mounting evidence reveals the substantial impact climate change has on oceans and marine ecosystems. Across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, this includes rising sea levels, erosion and coastal inundation.
The region is already recognised as the most disaster-prone in the world, with flooding, storm surges and landslides killing, on average, 43,000 people in the Asia-Pacific every year. There’s also evidence of climate change intensifying and prolonging extreme weather events such as tsunamis, as well as contributing to the loss of marine habitats and species – including key human food sources – through ocean acidification.
In an area that’s home to two-thirds of the world’s hungry (nearly 500 million people) and relies on the ocean for 20% of its protein, this change is catastrophic.
Sea-level rise (SLR) in the western Pacific Ocean has been increasing at a rate two to three times the global average, resulting in almost 30 centimetres of net rise since 1990. And for some areas within Asia, an increase in sea levels of just 30 centimetres (the length of a school ruler) can result in 45 metres of land incursion and erosion.
The Asia-Pacific is particularly vulnerable to SLR due to its topography, with 97% of South Pacific islands and half of Asia residing in low-lying coastal areas. The risk is exacerbated by socioeconomic conditions impacting communities’ ability to cope with, or adapt to, such climate-generated change.
Countries such as Bangladesh, where residents are attempting to adapt their livelihoods to accommodate rising seas and increased salinity, will within the next 30 years see the migration of 200,000 people from the coastal delta area every year.
Indonesia plans to move its capital to Borneo, in light of recent dangerous flooding and dire predictions of much worse to come.
Read more: Will relocating Indonesia's capital prove a success story?
In the Pacific, some countries without safe areas to relocate have embarked on the preemptive acquisition of land in other states. This includes Kiribati, whose former president has purchased a large plot in Fiji as a refuge, should his atoll homeland become uninhabitable.
The other side to the oceans equation – one of opportunity
Oceans also offer a substantial part of the solution to climate change. In fact, ocean-based mitigation could provide more than 20% of the emissions reductions needed to keep warming below the now widely accepted 1.5°C target, through actions including changes to maritime industry practices, offshore renewable energy generation, human food production, and consumption shifts to sustainable “blue foods” and “blue carbon” sinks.
This is of particular significance to the Asia-Pacific. In relation to the shipping industry, more than 60% of cargo traffic passes through Asian ports, while the Pacific Island states are heavily reliant on cargo for many of their needs, and the Marshall Islands is the third-largest vessel registry in the world.
Similarly, the region is significant in regard to blue carbon, the South Pacific having defined itself as a “blue ocean” continent with an ocean territory of more than 30.5 million km².
“Nations must ensure the ocean is more prominent in climate discussions – because the ocean & its health is integral to the heritage, economies & livelihoods of Small Island Developing States, & crucial to the world’s climate.” @andersen_inger at #COP26https://t.co/hDAS3Xmyrp
— UN Environment Programme (@UNEP) November 10, 2021
The Asia-Pacific region also dominates in terms of coastal blue carbon ecosystems. For example, in regard to mangroves, Indonesia has the greatest stock in the world, with Australia coming in second – at 17% and 10%, respectively. These and other blue carbon coastal ecosystems such as tidal marshes and seagrasses act as impressive “vacuums” for carbon dioxide, storing more carbon per unit area than terrestrial forests.
Read more:The wonderful world of wetlands and their resilience to climate change
However, oceans inclusion in climate talks remains piecemeal and inconsistent.
In 2006, UNFCCC greenhouse gas emission inventory guidelines were revised to include “offshore areas over which the country has jurisdiction”. However, the guidelines were inconsistent in their methodology for allocating emissions from different maritime sectors, leaving ships and aircraft engaged in international transport as external to the scope, allocating waterborne navigation emissions on international trips as split between country of departure and arrival, and fishing vessels emissions based upon the country delivering the fuel, with military fuel use categorised under “non-specified”.
Other elements weren’t extended beyond the shoreline until 2013, when the IPCC wetland supplement provided methodologies for coastal wetland sinks and sources. Unlike on land, however, their inclusion is optional.
Momentum for the inclusion of oceans in climate talks began to grow in 2014, with recognition of the critical role of the UNFCCC process in the UN General Assembly annual resolution on the Oceans and the Law of the Sea, and the IPCC in its AR5 Synthesis Report stating that climate change and acidification was altering the ocean at an unprecedented rate.
With the omission of oceans and coasts as part of the Paris Agreement negotiating text, 2015 marked a turning point. The efforts of some states to have oceans included in climate data and ambition then escalated, aided by 2015 COP co-president Fiji – a vocal advocate for ocean-climate linkages.
Australia, too, has participated in coalitions and in other forums with other countries in the region, contemplating the impact of climate change on oceans and considering potential mitigation measures. Of influence has been the High Level Panel on a Sustainable Ocean Economy, of which Indonesia and Palau are also members, and the Because the Ocean Initiative, which additionally includes the Marshall Islands, New Zealand and Singapore.
Mobilisation of the ocean community
A series of initiatives, including the re-emergence of Oceans Day at the 2015 COP, saw the major mobilisation of the ocean community, which has since sought to foster political momentum for oceans engagement. The first “Because the Ocean” declaration urged the creation of an Ocean Action Plan under the UNFCCC, and the following year a second declaration called for the inclusion of oceans in national reporting of emissions, and pledged reduction contributions.
These important steps and the ongoing mobilisation of action led to the first inclusion of oceans in the UNFCCC output document at COP25 in 2019, and the coining of the title the “Blue COP”.
In the intervening years, this prompted an Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue. To herald the COP26 another “Blue COP”, the world needed to step up in its ocean-climate commitment. In the event, the Glasgow Climate Pact did again acknowledge the oceans. It also committed to the Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue becoming a permanent annual event, and to the consideration by UNFCCC bodies of how to “integrate and strengthen ocean-based action into existing mandates and workplans”.
While these are positive measures, they’re all UNFCCC-oriented, and at this stage require no action by state parties.
Our @COP26 #GlasgowClimatePact call for an annual dialogue to strengthen ocean-based action succeeds, ensuring that the work to integrate ocean and climate change across the @UNFCCC will continue.
— Global Ocean Trust (@goceantrust) November 13, 2021
Read the reaction from ocean groups across the world: 👉 https://t.co/NzCRB8hazV
It remains today that we’re without systematic inclusion of the offshore in greenhouse gas inventories, and the range of other Paris Agreement instruments. Still, countries’ reporting areas aren’t aligned with the zones of sovereignty prescribed in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea – the international treaty establishing a legal framework for maritime areas, protection and activities.
Given the magnitude of oceans’ impacts on both climate and emissions, such exclusions risk the integrity of the emissions data and activities that underpin our global climate efforts, as well as the health of the ocean itself.
Countries at COP26 had an opportunity to put ocean impacts and mitigation on the main stage. On the first day of the event, the Because the Ocean Initiative released a new declaration, calling for the systematic inclusion of oceans in UNFCCC and Paris Agreement processes, and enhanced ocean-climate action.
Although a step in the right direction, the actual impact of the Glasgow Climate Pact will remain uncertain until the next COP, dependant on how the UNFCCC bodies respond to these directives, and what then occurs in regard to obligations of state parties and oceans resource allocation.
The world is watching, but perhaps those in Southeast Asia and Pacific Island countries are watching most keenly.
