An annual scientific check on the planet’s health shows that the Earth is moving closer to the danger zone, as warming climate and polluted ecosystems are weakening its natural resilience. One key indicator for ocean health has significantly worsened, the report warns.
The report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), released on Wednesday during Climate Week NYC, revealed that seven of nine safety limits, called “planetary boundaries” have now been breached, one more than last year.
The ocean acidification boundary has been crossed for the first time, driven mainly by fossil fuel burning and worsened by deforestation, the report said, meaning that the oceans’ ability to act as Earth’s stabiliser is weakening. Oceans turn more acidic by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, a process that can threaten marine life.
Levke Caesar, co-lead of the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab, and one of the report’s authors said the intensifying acidification of the seas, combined with warming and loss of oxygen, affects everything from coastal fisheries to the open ocean.
“The consequences ripple outward impacting food security, global climate stability, and human wellbeing,” she added, noting that the ocean’s ability to act as a sink for planet-warming carbon dioxide is declining.
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Since the start of the industrial era, the ocean’s surface pH – which measures the level of acidity – has fallen by around 0.1 units, a 30-40% increase in acidity, pushing marine ecosystems beyond safe limits.
Tiny sea snails known as pteropods – which are an important part of the marine food chain – are already showing signs of shell damage, for example. Cold-water corals and tropical coral reefs are especially at risk from intensifying acidification, the report said.
Commenting on the findings, Chris Thorne, senior oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK, called on states to urgently develop proposals for a network of ocean sanctuaries on the high seas, after a new pact to protect international waters last week gained enough ratifications to enter into force.
“We must give marine life space to build resilience to severe changes in the marine environment,” he added.
Improvements in ozone, aerosols offer hope
The other breached planetary boundaries include climate change, extinctions and natural productivity, forest loss and human impacts on freshwater systems, and pollution caused by overuse of fertilisers.
“More than three-quarters of the Earth’s support systems are not in the safe zone. Humanity is pushing beyond the limits of a safe operating space, increasing the risk of destabilising the planet”, said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a report co-author.
He added at a press conference in New York that the ocean is under multiple pressures from several boundaries, “and that makes us particularly nervous”.
Work is ongoing to understand when and how systems subject to a range of stresses – such as coral reefs, the Amazon rainforest and polar ice sheets – can tip into a state from which they cannot recover and maybe irreversibly lost or transformed, he added.
But he and other scientists behind the report stressed it is not too late to bring the planet back within safe environmental limits.
They pointed to the two areas where progress has been made: a drop in aerosol pollution and healing of the ozone layer, which has improved after governments got together to tackle the issue under the Montreal Protocol.
Chief planetary scientists for governments?
Speaking to journalists in New York, former Irish President Mary Robinson, who also belongs to a group of Planetary Guardians who support the annual scorecard, called on governments to appoint a “chief planetary scientist”.
“Just as chief economists safeguard financial policy, chief planetary scientists would ensure decisions from budgets to food systems to disaster planning keep us within Earth’s safe operating space,” she said.
Climate Home News understands that Indonesia and the UK are considering appointing such a scientist.
“Imagine if every national budget, every security plan, every trade deal, began with the question: does this keep us within planetary boundaries?” Robinson asked.
The post Planet’s health in rising danger, as ocean acidification crosses safety limit appeared first on Climate Home News.
Planet’s health in rising danger, as ocean acidification crosses safety limit
Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans.
After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.
It named Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.
“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.
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Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans
Many governments have still not submitted a nationally determined contribution to the UN, breaching a key requirement of the Paris Agreement
In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.
Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.
By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.
Rainforest and renewable energy ambitions
The silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.
After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.
Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.
Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.
“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.
“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement requirement
The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.
Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.
Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement and so do not have active NDCs, nor does Taiwan, which is not a UN member state.
Rao said that because the PAICC is “facilitative and non-punitive”, naming the countries “is meant to open a door, not close one – the invited consultation is the point”.
“In recent months, governments that explained their constraints, whether capacity, finance or domestic process, have been met with follow-up and support rather than sanction, and the number of silent governments has fallen sharply,” Rao said.
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Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs