With record-breaking ocean temperatures weakening the world’s largest carbon sink, a group of countries is pushing for the UN COP31 summit to deliver meaningful commitments to protect marine ecosystems. Yet this effort could be hobbled by a shrinking pool of climate finance, experts warn.

While discussions on oceans at UN climate talks have so far been limited to annual informal dialogues on the sidelines, African countries, the European Union, some Latin American nations and small island states have launched a bid for COP31 to incorporate ocean protection measures into “negotiated decisions”.

COP31 co-presidents Türkiye and Australia have responded to this call and are working with interested countries on a voluntary ocean roadmap, described as a “concise action plan” and expected to include regional and international steps to integrate measures to safeguard the planet’s ocean and climate.

At a meeting in Türkiye in September, which plans to convene more than 25 ministers from Asia-Pacific, Africa, Europe and Latin America, governments will consider how to incorporate the recommendations of the informal UN ocean dialogues into global climate policy, according to the Turkish co-presidency.

Whitney Berry, associate director of climate policy at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, said that even an informal “multi-year” plan, instead of a negotiated roadmap, could help guide the ocean dialogues series in the UN climate process towards more concrete results.

“If this plan informed the following dialogues and made sure they were aligned with the Paris [Agreement] ambition cycle, including opportunities like the Global Stocktake, we’d have such a strengthened opportunity for ocean integration,” she said.

The upcoming stocktake – an international assessment of countries’ climate policies that takes place every five years and will culminate at COP33 in 2028 – presents a “huge opportunity” to turn fragmented actions into a “globally recognised evidence base” that can inform the next round of climate plans, Berry added.

Addressing rocketing ocean temperatures

Influenced by this year’s projected “super El Niño” on top of climate heating, the world’s oceans have experienced the warmest July on record, according to both EU and US monitoring data. Scientists are warning of severe mass die-offs of key species like corals, sponges and macro-algae.

John Bruno, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told journalists in a briefing that some organisms like coral reefs can only tolerate an increase of about 1 degree Celsius before they start experiencing heath declines. In some seas like the Mediterranean, marine heatwaves have caused temperature increases of up to 6C.

As climate pressure mounts on ocean systems, a group of more than 150 top scientists has called on the COP31 Turkish and Australian presidencies to urgently “integrate ocean priorities into negotiation texts on mitigation, adaptation, and finance”.

They also urged world leaders to issue a “clear political declaration and finance outcomes” on ocean-based climate solutions at the World Leaders Summit, a two-day event during COP where heads of states give speeches laying out their climate priorities.

Measures to protect marine ecosystems have gathered more attention in recent years, as 90% of national climate plans submitted last year included at least one ocean-based target, compared to 62% in 2015. But countries have faced challenges implementing these commitments due to finance and governance constraints, according to a paper published in June by the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Most of the current targets focus on protecting marine areas, but have so far lacked commitments to reduce emissions produced at sea, for example through offshore wind or cleaner maritime transport.

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Rethinking ocean negotiations at COP

At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, countries agreed to “integrate and strengthen ocean-based action” across climate negotiations, which led to the creation of a yearly informal Ocean and Climate Dialogue. This dialogue does not produce a negotiated agreement like other parts of the COP.

The dialogue’s informal nature is both an advantage and a challenge, said Jonathan Baines, ocean programme manager at WRI. It provides a more flexible space than formal negotiations and has helped raise the ambition of countries’ climate plans, but COP presidencies have not fully incorporated its outcomes into the official climate talks, he said.

After five years of holding this dialogue at the mid-year climate negotiations in Bonn, countries called for more tangible outcomes in their submissions to this year’s Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue in June. Some proposed the creation of a roadmap to guide discussions on specific topics and feed them into the formal COP negotiations.

In their submission, the African Group of Negotiators called for a “structured, multi-year roadmap” aligned with the next Global Stocktake. The EU also backed this roadmap proposal, while Pacific islands and some Latin American countries supported incorporating the dialogue outcomes into the negotiations without specifically endorsing the roadmap initiative.

As part of a preparatory event before COP31 focused on oceans, Türkiye has confirmed to Climate Home News plans for a Blue COP31 roadmap, which will be discussed by the ministers attending the gathering in September.

“In essence, this programme is designed to ensure that the ocean is no longer the missing link in climate action, but rather the driving force behind a more resilient, sustainable, and prosperous future for all coastal communities,” Türkiye’s COP31 presidency said in a written comment.

Opposition emerges to “additional burdens”

Some regional groups have already started presenting their priorities publicly, with small island nations calling for more finance, ocean-based renewable energy and bolstering regional research institutes.

African diplomats said “the core problem remains translating these paper commitments into real-world, on-the-ground implementation” and noted that while countries in the region have strengthened their climate plans, “the support required to implement these commitments has not kept pace”.

“The truth is that ambition without implementation is an illusion,” the African submission reads, adding that nearly half of all ocean-related commitments in national climate plans are “strictly conditional on external support”.

This year’s Ocean and Climate Dialogue, chaired by Fiji and Belgium, urged countries to discuss ways of “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, which generated pushback from big fossil fuel-producing and consuming countries who said they would not accept this as a negotiated agreement.

Both the group of Arab nations and India, meanwhile, warned against “imposing additional burdens” on developing countries and rejected a dialogue with “prescriptive expectations”.

The Arab group submission said its members oppose “any report that explicitly or implicitly targets specific energy sources, advocates sectoral restrictions, or fails to adequately reflect different national circumstances, development priorities, and energy security considerations”. This is a thinly veiled reference to singling out fossil fuels within the discussions.

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Climate finance constraints

While developing countries are already seeking more funding to implement ocean-based conservation, carbon storage and clean energy measures, experts said this will be a “difficult discussion” at COP31, as developed countries will arrive in Antalya with shrinking aid budgets.

Historically, ocean-related finance has accounted for only a small share of overseas development assistance (ODA), fluctuating between 0.8% and 1.4% of the total, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Berry of the Ocean Conservancy said one opportunity to “grow the pie” of available climate funds will come at a meeting of the UN climate convention’s Standing Committee on Finance, which this year will be held in September in Sydney and will concentrate on financing water systems and the ocean.

“We haven’t had a focused conversation on ocean climate finance before from the UN climate process,” she said. “If they can clarify those financing pathways specific to ocean climate action and help provide the necessary support for countries to translate commitments into projects, that will be a real benefit.”

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As marine heat breaks records, countries seek ocean roadmap at COP31