Within the ocean’s vast expanse lie immense reservoirs of carbon – surpassing those found in either the atmosphere or the land.
The ocean actively captures and incorporates carbon through various natural mechanisms, locking in a significant portion that would otherwise circulate within the Earth’s systems, thereby functioning as a continuous carbon sink.
This crucial role mitigates climate change by reducing the amount of carbon which ends up in the atmosphere. If the ocean remains as a net carbon sink, it can aid in offsetting ongoing emissions and slowing global warming.
Unfortunately, a longstanding misconception persists that the ocean has an infinite resilience to human exploitation and negligence – likely stemming from the fact that the consequences of our actions are obscured beneath the surface.
Unsustainable use of the ocean’s resources – such as through overfishing – coupled with warming and acidification progressively erode the ocean’s capacity to regulate carbon and heat and its ability to sustain essential resources and services.
Consequently, rates of carbon sequestration are weakening and the vast carbon reserves held within marine ecosystems are increasingly susceptible to release.
This guest post lays out the climate opportunities presented by “blue carbon” and the challenges these ecosystems face.
Blue carbon is a term that refers to carbon captured by the world’s ocean and coastal ecosystems that has potential to be conserved or enhanced. Blue carbon is stored in vegetated coastal and marine ecosystems such as seagrass, mangroves and salt marshes.
The opportunity of coastal ecosystems
Coastal ecosystems – particularly vegetated ones, such as mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes – are among the most crucial marine systems for storing carbon. Like plants on land, marine vegetation absorbs CO2 through photosynthesis. Because their waterlogged soils are low in oxygen, the carbon stored there can be locked away for centuries.
Despite only occupying approximately 0.5% of the ocean, these ecosystems boast remarkable carbon sequestration capabilities, contributing more than 50% of total carbon buried in marine sediments.
However, these vital ecosystems also face relentless human-caused pressures, from runoff of nutrients and sediments to urban expansion. They are being destroyed at an alarming pace – an average of 2% loss per year for mangroves – and are among the most threatened ecosystems on the planet.
Nevertheless, amidst this threat lies an opportunity: by reversing the conditions that are causing their decline, we can restore lost ecosystems and harness their potential as carbon sequestration hotspots once more.
The chart below shows the annual carbon storage potential of coastal ecosystems around the world, with yellow and light green indicating low storage potential and darker blues indicating high storage potential. The US, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia and Mexico stand out as countries with particularly high storage potential.
Managing coastal vegetated ecosystems to enhance carbon sequestration, often referred to as “blue carbon”, represents a valuable nature-based strategy for mitigating climate change.
While the amount of carbon that is offset through these methods is estimated to be at least an order of magnitude below other mitigation approaches – such as ocean alkalinisation and direct carbon capture and storage – they have additional benefits.
These ecosystems also enhance adaptation by stabilising coastlines, safeguarding against erosion and storms, enhancing water quality and nurturing marine life – thus promoting biodiversity through the provision of shelter, food and nursery grounds.
Climate and biodiversity
Blue carbon is a prime example of how climate change and the alarming decline in global biodiversity are connected.
Initiatives focused on blue carbon restoration – such as the “Mangroves for Coastal Resilience” project in Indonesia, the largest such initiative in the world – not only enhance carbon sequestration, but also reverse habitat loss and bolster biodiversity. Safeguarding marine biodiversity can also help secure the long-term well-being and prosperity of people whose lives and livelihoods are tightly linked to the oceans.
For example, declines in marine biodiversity undermine ecosystem resilience, heightening vulnerability to environmental disturbances and impacting economies reliant on marine resources. Loss of species degrades the food webs underpinning fisheries, jeopardising food security and livelihoods.
Furthermore, biodiversity loss directly compromises human health by fostering the emergence of zoonotic diseases that pass from animals to humans, diminishing water quality and impeding the exploration of new pharmaceuticals and treatments.
Protecting communities
Coastal restoration projects are already being carried out around the world, from small, local projects to larger initiatives.
They also encompass a range of activities, from planting new mangrove trees to managing tidal flows.
There are several crucial factors that demand careful consideration before implementing such a project.
Among these is the need to prioritise the protection of intact ecosystems. By safeguarding these areas, we can prevent the loss of carbon they have already sequestered and sidestep the time lag associated with re-establishing vital ecosystem services following habitat restoration.
Additionally, it is imperative to address the underlying pressures contributing to ecosystem loss, such as sewage discharge and agricultural runoff.
Restoration efforts must also be designed to withstand potential future challenges, such as changing land-use patterns and the projected impacts of climate change. Proactive measures to safeguard and restore coastal ecosystems should account for these complex and dynamic factors to ensure their long-term success and resilience in the face of ongoing environmental changes.
Local engagement and support for blue carbon initiatives are also needed because coastal communities often directly interact with these ecosystems for livelihoods, fishing, tourism and protection from natural disasters. Engaging these communities ensures that conservation efforts are sustainable. Additionally, tapping into the knowledge and expertise of local communities about coastal ecosystems is essential for informed decision-making.
Integrating carbon sequestration goals with other conservation and management objectives, such as sustainable fisheries and coastal resilience, is possible by empowering local communities to lead blue carbon initiatives. This can help ensure social equity, address economic opportunities and reduce conflicts over resource use.
Ultimately, garnering people’s buy-in for blue carbon solutions is essential for their effectiveness, sustainability and equitable distribution of benefits.
Considering marine sediment
Blue carbon “solutions” can be regarded as any intervention which aims to enhance the ocean’s natural capacity to store and sequester carbon.
As such, one might consider the management of commercial species and natural populations to increase the biomass of, and thereby carbon contained in, marine organisms. Managing interactions with the seabed can also be an important blue carbon solution.
Recent estimates suggest marine sediments are the largest store of organic carbon on the planet. Therefore, activities which disrupt them, such as bottom trawling or deep-sea mining, may be stirring up this sediment and leading to carbon being released back to the atmosphere.
Although the full picture has yet to emerge, examining the impacts of where and how trawling is conducted allows us to make choices informed by all of the potential impacts. And before deep-sea mining activities are further scaled up, a more comprehensive understanding of their impacts is vital.
The post Guest post: The role of ‘blue carbon’ in addressing climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: The role of ‘blue carbon’ in addressing climate change
The UK has avoided the need for gas imports worth £5.9bn since the start of the Hormuz crisis as a result of record electricity generation from wind and solar, reveals Carbon Brief analysis.
While gas prices are surging towards levels not seen since the 2022 energy crisis, the UK has been generating record amounts of power from wind and solar, up 14% year-on-year.
This unprecedented clean-power generation is directly cutting the need for gas-fired electricity, which is down by nearly 10% year-on-year in 2026 to date.
In total, wind and solar have generated a record 41% share of the UK’s electricity needs in 2026 to date, compared with 25% from gas, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis.
The figure below shows that wind and solar generation has avoided the need for UK gas imports worth a total of £5.9bn since the outbreak of war between the US and Iran in February 2026.
The analysis shows that these avoided gas imports would have required the UK to secure the equivalent of more than 100 additional tanker deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The £1.3bn import saving in September 2026 to date is the result of record wind and solar output, at nearly 10 terawatt hours (TWh), combined with surging gas prices.
Wholesale gas prices in the UK have remained elevated ever since Russia cut off supplies to Europe in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Gas averaged 90p per therm from 2023 until the start of this year, roughly three times above 2019 prices, before the Covid and Ukraine crises.
Since the outbreak of war in the Middle East in March, gas prices have climbed higher still, averaging 134p per therm or nearly four times the level seen in 2019.
In September 2026 to date, gas prices have averaged 189p per therm, reaching their highest level since the global energy crisis in 2022, as shown in the figure below.
UK gas prices are spiking again because winter is approaching – meaning higher demand for heating – and there is no end in sight for the Hormuz crisis.
At the same time, European gas stocks are low. This means Europe will have to compete with Asia to secure the cargoes of LNG needed to keep warm.
In the UK, high wholesale gas prices are hitting household gas bills under the price cap set by energy regulator Ofgem – but thanks to clean energy, electricity bills have barely increased.
From this Thursday, 1 October, typical household gas bills will be 33% higher than they were in April, some £200 per year, according to thinktank Nesta.
In contrast, household electricity bills will only have risen 4%, according to Nesta’s analysis.
Andrew Sissons, director for sustainable future at Nesta, explained in a social media post that “the link between electricity and gas prices has already begun to break”.
The UK and other fossil-fuel importing nations are being hit not only by high gas prices, but also by high prices for oil, diesel and other refined fuels. The EU has reportedly had to pay an extra €100bn for fossil-fuel imports since the start of the crisis.
For example, UK diesel prices this week hit record levels of nearly £2 per litre. In contrast, recent Carbon Brief analysis shows that electric cars are up to nine times cheaper to drive.
In her speech to the Labour party conference this week, energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh said that energy bills were high because the UK is “exposed to global fossil-fuel markets”.
In his own conference speech, prime minister Andy Burnham said the expansion of clean energy was easing the impact of high gas prices on electricity bills. He said:
“We are already taking more control of our electricity prices with a massive expansion of home-grown renewables and nuclear. I have asked Miatta to speed up the breaking of the link between what we pay for power at home and the international gas market, to get bills down.”
The post Analysis: Wind and solar save UK from gas imports worth £5.9bn during Hormuz crisis appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Wind and solar save UK from gas imports worth £5.9bn during Hormuz crisis
The deadly flash flood that thundered down Nepal’s Bhote Koshi valley a month ago may have been hard to predict given the complexity of monitoring glacial slopes in the high mountains. But it should come as a surprise to no one that such a disaster could happen in a world set to barrel past the 1.5C warming limit governments agreed to in 2015.
I say this with confidence because even before the ink was dry on the Paris Agreement, former colleagues and I were writing extensively about the dangers posed by accelerating glacier melt in the Himalayas. I went back to look at what we covered, often working with local journalists in Pakistan, India and Nepal. It was substantial.
Comment: The response to Nepal’s disaster is a test for global climate institutions
In one story from a conference on climate change and geology, Bill McGuire, a professor who then led the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London, was quoted as saying: “The most likely thing we are going to see soon is an increased level in giant landslides in mountainous terrains, huge collapses, millions of cubic metres of rock.”
That is precisely what unleashed Nepal’s most recent disaster, some 13 years later.
Other articles zoomed in on internationally funded programmes to prevent glacial lake outburst floods; studies warning of the rising risks to downstream communities; and cross-border efforts (or lack of them) to set up monitoring systems. But information has not led to sufficient action.
Falling behind growing impacts
Reporting on climate-related disasters over the past 20 years (it was way back then that UN aid chief John Holmes started referring to extreme weather as the “new normal”) has been a pretty frustrating beat, as things have gotten dramatically worse.
There’s no question that our understanding of the risks has grown hugely – alongside our knowledge of how to protect people and infrastructure in the face of fast-growing threats.
Yet governments and businesses have dragged their feet on adaptation policies and practical measures, even when confronted with the numbers showing it’s far cheaper to prevent and prepare than to clean up and rebuild after a flood or a storm. This intransigence has left a yawning chasm in the world’s ability to deal with climate change-driven impacts.
Let’s call it the adaptation accountability gap.
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These days we see the effects all around us – in hospital emergency rooms where workers and older people struggle with heat exhaustion; in campsites and hotels abandoned by holidaymakers fleeing forest fires; in flooded streets piled high with mud, broken furniture and twisted cars.
The only bright side to the growing climate chaos we’re experiencing is that it’s become practically impossible for politicians and corporate bosses to ignore the evidence – and the rising cost to their balance sheets. Voters who can no longer afford to shoulder the economic and social burden of this damage need to let their leaders know time’s up.
1.5C overshoot means adapting differently
Last week, during Climate Week NYC, I moderated an event packed with experts who work on adapting to climate change – from Nepal to Brazil, from Sierra Leone to the Marshall Islands, and from communities to the top of governments and UN agencies. They spoke of tree-planting to stabilise slopes, heat insurance for informal workers, a climate risk guide for midwives, drought-resistant seeds and solar panels to irrigate farmland along the Nile.
Amid the diversity of experiences and approaches, there were two common threads: first, as underlined by the UN Environment Programme’s new report on overshooting 1.5C, we may have missed the boat to catch up on adaptation as we know it.
With global warming continuing apace, we’ll need to come up with new “transformational” strategies if the coral reefs, ice sheets, oceans and other natural systems on which we rely cross tipping points and unleash cascading consequences. Nepal’s flash flood is being flagged as an example of the kind of disaster that requires a major change in how we think about adaptation.
Second, the investment required to adapt to intensifying climate shocks and stresses can no longer be seen as something to be squeezed out of shrinking foreign aid budgets. There are a growing number of tried-and-tested funds and mechanisms for channelling finance at the local, national and global levels – these must be filled, replenished and used without delay.
Businesses need to get stuck in too, not least to safeguard their assets, operations and profits – but also because in some sectors like agriculture or water there are opportunities for a return. Despite this, there are many activities governments will have no choice but to pay for, such as moving people out of the path of rising seas.
Finance not flowing where needed
Mikko Ollikainen, who heads up the UN’s pioneering Adaptation Fund for developing countries, told the event the fund has a portfolio of projects worth $1.6 billion but a pipeline waiting to be financed to the tune of $1.8 billion. Yet, in recent years, as needs balloon, donor nations have failed to meet its annual fundraising target of $300 million at COP climate summits.
The chair of the UN climate body for implementation, Julia Gardiner, said she expects to see more pressure on governments at November’s COP31 summit in Türkiye to show how they will meet a goal to triple adaptation finance by 2035 and fill the under-resourced coffers of the fledgling Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).
Nepal, meanwhile, is still waiting for a formal response to its request to the FRLD for urgent support to tackle the aftermath of the flood. Manjeet Dhakal, a Nepali scientist who advises least-developed countries in the UN climate process, said the disaster – which killed over 1,450 people and left nearly 6,000 missing – cannot be treated as just the latest climate crisis that grabs the headlines before it’s replaced by another.
That was backed up by Prakriti Dhakal, personal under-secretary to Nepal’s prime minister, who has been working closely on the emergency response. She said she had received many condolences and warm words of support during her meetings in New York.
But, she asked, “when you go home, will you continue having that sympathy for us that translates into something rational, something long-term, to strengthen the communities in Nepal?” A fitting response would be for governments to get behind a new Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism, proposed by Nepal’s leader at the UN last week, as one way to start closing the adaptation accountability gap.
The post Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap appeared first on Climate Home News.
Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap
Brazil’s environment minister says he is “very optimistic” that the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) – a new rainforest fund to channel private and public finance to developing nations – can meet a key $10 billion funding target this year, and is not at risk from his country’s elections next month.
The TFFF, launched by Brazil at COP30 in the Amazon last November and co-led by Norway, is intended as an alternative to traditional grant-based forest finance. The fund aims to raise $125bn in public and private capital, invest it in bond markets, and then pay countries that keep their forests standing from the annual returns. Donor contributions needed to get it going have tailed off after an initial burst.
Speaking to Climate Home News on the sidelines of Climate Week in New York, Brazilian environment minister João Paulo Capobianco pointed out that in less than a year since its official launch, the TFFF has already secured $7.3bn from governments.
“How many other initiatives can say that?” he asked. “Of course, if you have $7 billion, it’s easier for more countries to consider their own contribution. And not just countries – non-governmental organisations also. We are expecting even more support.”
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As its initial target, the TFFF aims to raise $10bn in seed capital from governments by the end of 2026, and still needs to fill a gap of $2.7bn. Its backers say that for each dollar in public funding, they can secure $4 from the private sector. Critics say the $10bn goal barely covers the fund’s expenses and would not allow it to make any significant payments to forest countries.
Because setting up its financial architecture, raising the starting capital and making the first investments will take time, experts say the TFFF is unlikely to generate any payments for developing countries before 2028.
Seeking new pledges
Capobianco told Climate Home News that Brazil is still in talks with potential new contributors to the fund, among them China, Korea and Japan, and said he hoped to see more pledges announced at the upcoming biodiversity and climate COPs in October and November. The Netherlands is expected to up its first small contribution and Canada may also come in, according to other sources close to the TFFF.
Because the fund was not created as part of the UN climate talks and is hosted by the World Bank, developing countries can contribute without taking on wider donor responsibilities for climate finance. Brazil and Indonesia – both large emerging rainforest nations – have each pledged $1bn to the TFFF.
Earlier in September, the UK became the latest country to pledge funding – promising a loan of £400 million (about $540 million). Capobianco welcomed the contribution and noted that Britain has also said it will keep “under review” the possibility of putting in more.
Currently the largest donor is Norway, which announced a $3bn pledge last year at COP30 in Belém. However, that pledge came with conditions, among them that the fund must reach $10bn in sponsor capital by 2026, and that Norway’s contribution can’t make up more than 20% of that total. Over the longer term, this means the fund must raise $15bn from governments to unlock Norway’s full investment.
Comment: UK’s budget juggling trick with rainforest loan for bus-fare cap needs transparency
Speaking at a forest finance event in New York, Norway’s environment minister Sigrun Aasland said the country’s pledge was made not “only out of solidarity but because of shared interests”, adding that protecting rainforests is critical for climate and biodiversity goals as well as for national security.
“Tropical deforestation matters to people in the Amazon and in the Congo. But let’s not forget that it also matters to global food production and to the cost of living in Oslo or in London,” she said.
At the event, Guyana’s minister of natural resources Vickram Bharrat said the TFFF is “one in a menu of options” to finance forest protection in developing countries. He added that to boost its capital “maybe we should put some amount of pressure on oil companies to contribute to the fund”.
Upcoming election “not a risk”
Brazil, which has been pivotal to getting the fund off the ground, is now heading into a national election that could see the country swing back to an anti-climate stance if right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro beats current left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Capobianco, however, said the election result does not pose a risk to the TFFF.
“It’s a global initiative, not a Brazilian initiative. We proposed the first idea, but nowadays it’s a global initiative,” he said. “We believe the investor countries and the tropical countries together have the possibility to continue this process.”
In Brazil, the first round of voting is scheduled for Sunday, October 4. If no candidate wins more than 50% of valid votes, a run-off ballot will take place on October 25.
COP30 roadmap to end deforestation will invite countries to draft domestic plans
In July, the TFFF board adopted a charter, which outlines the instrument’s objectives and values, including that 20% of the payments made to tropical countries will go directly to Indigenous people and local communities.
The charter also says the TFFF board may comprise up to 12 member countries during the initial phase. Currently, seven seats are filled by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Germany, Brazil, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Indonesia.
The board has also formally incorporated the Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF) – the TFFF’s investment arm that will trade bonds in financial markets – hosted in Luxembourg.
The post Brazil confident new rainforest fund will reach $10bn donor milestone appeared first on Climate Home News.
Brazil confident new rainforest fund will reach $10bn donor milestone
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