This paper analyses the crucial interlinkage of ocean and coastal and marine Nature-based Solutions (NbS) as part of the GST.
In 2015, the adoption of the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement set in motion a series of national-level commitments – known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – in which countries communicate the flexible but ambitions actions that they plan to take to meet the goal to limit global warming to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The Paris Agreement sets out, among other actions, mitigation, adaptation and finance goals.
The Paris Agreement relies on the ambition mechanism or the concept of “ratcheting up” every five years with revised, increasingly ambitious commitments defined at a national level based on country context, capacity, and flexibility through the NDCs. The ambition mechanism is the tool defined to assess progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and to inform the next round of NDCs. The Global Stocktake (GST) is an avenue for informing and raising the ambition of countries’ NDCs. It could trigger additional public support and action on the ground. Understanding where ocean issues can be adequately included within the GST and then integrating them into this process will be critical factors to ensure the ocean’s contribution to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement is reflected, understood, and prioritized. Further, the IPCC SROCC (2019) indicates that over the 21st century, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions with increased temperatures, greater upper ocean stratification, further acidification, oxygen decline and altered net primary production. Clear understanding and integration of the ocean’s role can encourage and leverage its widespread inclusion in domestic and international climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience policies.