25 September 2020 – Things are starting to move on the Ocean & Climate nexus front, after the relative paralysis of the last six months due to the Covid crisis.
At a webinar co-organized by the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification (OA Alliance), the Ocean & Climate Platform and the Secretariat of the Because the Ocean Initiative, Joanna Post, Programme Officer at the UNFCCC Secretariat, confirmed that the Ocean & Climate Change Dialogue mandated by COP25 (the Blue COP held in Madrid nearly a year ago) and postponed twice in the last six months, is now going to take place online 30 November-1st December, 2020.
The focus of the Dialogue is to consider how to strengthen mitigation and adaptation action in the context of the ocean and climate change. The COP invited Parties and non-Party stakeholders to submit views and proposals to inform the dialogue, and to date some 44 submissions by Parties and non-Parties have been received by the Secretariat.
Click here to access all submissions.
Responsibly Addressing the Ocean in the Context of Climate Change:
The submission prepared by the Secretariat of the Because the Ocean Initiative with support from the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation (FPA2), “Responsibly Addressing the Ocean in the Context of Climate Change”, was the first one to be published, in the month of February 2020, and was cross-referenced in several other submissions by Parties and Non-Parties. It can be found here on this website.
It is expected that the Chair of the UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body on Science and Technical Advice (SBSTA) will circulate an information note in advance of the Dialogue, providing background information and a summary of the submissions received.
An examination of submissions available is showing some of the following broad trends:
- The Dialogue should discuss how to strengthen existing processes and support for action on adaptation and mitigation, including under the UNFCCC and the wider UN engagement on ocean and climate change.
- The Dialogue should be guided by the latest available science, particularly the Special Report on the Ocean & Cryosphere (SROCC) published by the IPCC a year ago.
- The Dialogue should discuss how to strengthen existing processes and support for action on adaptation and mitigation, including under the UNFCCC and the wider UN engagement on ocean and climate change.
- The Dialogue should also discuss how to strengthen action on adaptation and mitigation at national (and perhaps other) levels as well as discuss finance and funding, technology transfer, capacity building and other cross-cutting issues.
- The Dialogue should look to highlighting expected outcomes from the Dialogue and next steps in regards to action on ocean and climate change, and the immediate perspective and timetable for next steps leading to COP26 which is scheduled for November 2021 in Glasgow.
It is hoped that, notwithstanding the “virtual” (online) setting, the Dialogue can be an inclusive event for all.
As mandated in the Decision adopted by COP25 in Madrid, after the Dialogue the Chair of SBSTA will prepare an informal summary report on the Dialogue, which is expected to be available as soon as possible in 2021 for COP26 to consider how to move forward to further integrate ocean and climate change actions.
Some Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted or prepared recently by UNFCCC Parties to form part of the second commitment period of the Paris Agreement, for example those of the Governments of Chile and the Republic of the Seychelles include action to protect ocean ecosystem in order to increase their resilience to climate change impacts. Several Parties to the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) are also proposing the designation of Marine Protected Areas in the East Antarctic, the Weddell Sea, and the Antarctic Peninsula.
As a sign of the increasing importance of the ocean in climate policy, the UNFCCC Secretariat has also just opened a new Ocean section on their dashboard.