As world leaders planned their schedules for COP29 in Baku, researchers and activists were pleading for the ocean not to be forgotten.
Ahead of the meeting, the Baku Ocean Declaration (issued by the leading US research institutes Woods Hole Oceanographic and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography) called for more spending on ocean monitoring and a general acknowledgement of the key role of the ocean in mitigating climate change. The declaration repeated a fact regularly cited by ocean advocates: without the ocean’s almighty absorption of excess heat, Earth would be in a really bad place. The ocean is the “planet’s largest carbon sink and currently absorbs nearly one quarter to one third of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, and 90% of heat generated by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions”, notes the declaration.
During COP29, various government officials, campaigners, scientists and other delegates made the case for the oceans. “The ocean is our most valuable nature-based solution in the fight against the climate crisis, but it is still being sidelined,” said Steve Trent, CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation.
Most national negotiators’ time was spent wrangling over who should be putting money into ameliorating our warming planet, and how much each nation should contribute. Delegates were not expected to explicitly mention money for ocean finance, so Bloomberg reported during COP29 that the focus was instead on “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs). Each Paris Agreement member country must regularly submit an NDC, which details their emissions-reduction plans. The latest round of upgraded NDCs are due in early 2025.
“We are increasingly seeing countries include ocean-related issues and coastal resilience into their NDCs, but it is still not high enough on the international agenda,” Karen Sack, executive director of the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance, told Bloomberg.
Anna-Marie Laura, senior director of climate policy for the Ocean Conservancy NGO, said in a statement that: “Calls for ocean-climate action were mainstreamed throughout CO29, with many governments speaking ambitiously of the need to increase the role of ocean-based solutions in their NDCs and the absolute necessity of aligning efforts to protect biodiversity and address climate change.”
But, she added: “Without a high-quality finance package to support a just transition and a climate-resilient future for developing nations, we will fail to stop the climate crisis, and fail to protect our ocean and coastal communities.”
At the start of COP29, some observed that Baku sits on the shore of a sea that is disappearing: not a good omen. At the end, many commenters looked out to sea again as they reached for a metaphor to describe the final USD 300 billion a year climate finance agreement: a mere drop in the ocean.