Warming world, changing ocean: mitigation and adaptation to support resilient marine systems

Abstract

Proactive and coordinated action to mitigate and adapt to climate change will be essential for achieving the healthy, resilient, safe, sustainably harvested and biodiverse ocean that the UN Decade of Ocean Science and sustainable development goals (SDGs) seek. Ocean-based mitigation actions could contribute 12% of the emissions reductions required by 2030 to keep warming to less than 1.5 ºC but, because substantial warming is already locked in, extensive adaptation action is also needed. Here, as part of the Future Seas project, we use a “foresighting/hindcasting” technique to describe two scenarios for 2030 in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation for ocean systems. The “business-as-usual” future is expected if current trends continue, while an alternative future could be realised if society were to effectively use available data and knowledge to push as far as possible towards achieving the UN SDGs. We identify three drivers that differentiate between these alternative futures: (i) appetite for climate action, (ii) handling extreme events, and (iii) climate interventions. Actions that could navigate towards the optimistic, sustainable and technically achievable future include: proactive creation and enhancement of economic incentives for mitigation and adaptation; supporting the proliferation of local initiatives to spur a global transformation; enhancing proactive coastal adaptation management; investing in research to support adaptation to emerging risks; deploying marine-based renewable energy; deploying marine-based negative emissions technologies; developing and assessing solar radiation management approaches; and deploying appropriate solar radiation management approaches to help safeguard critical ecosystems. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11160-021-09678-4.

Successive extreme climatic events lead to immediate, large‐scale, and diverse responses from fish in the Arctic

“…Marine extreme climatic events (ECEs), such as marine heatwaves, are increasing in intensity and frequency with climate change (Frölicher et al, 2018;Laufkötter et al, 2020;Oliver et al, 2018;Perkins-Kirkpatrick & Lewis, 2020). Recent reviews on the subject call for an effort toward better understanding of ECEs and their ecosystem consequences to improve their predictability, and support ecosystem-based management to maintain marine systems resilience (Holbrook et al, 2020;Trebilco et al, 2022;van de Pol et al, 2017).…”

Safeguarding marine life: conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems

“…Methods for communication can include technological tools such as environmental dashboards, or computer and smartphone applications. These tools can provide information on the current status of marine ecosystems and the future threat of climate change (Melbourne-Thomas et al 2021 ; Trebilco et al 2021 , this issue) and economic activities (Novaglio et al 2021 , this issue) to these systems. They can provide information about ecological outcomes of government policies and link consumers to supply chains and sustainability information on products (Farmery et al 2021 , this issue), and ultimately provide steps that individuals can implement to contribute to positive outcomes for marine environments.…”

“…Where there was overlap between the challenges, this affected the level of detail we considered on those aspects of our challenge on safeguarding marine life, and we refer to those papers for additional insights and solutions. For a detailed articulation of potential actions to support mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change in marine systems, please see Trebilco et al ( 2021 , this issue) and Melbourne-Thomas et al ( 2021 , this issue). Likewise, anticipated global trends in the demand for seafood and other products, such as energy and minerals, and the growth of activities to meet such demand will significantly impact the conservation of marine biodiversity and ecosystems into the future.…”

The super wicked problem of ocean health: a socio-ecological and behavioural perspective

“…The papers in the Future Seas special issue each explored potential scenarios of sustainable futures that are theoretically achievable for a range of key challenges for a healthy ocean (and in line with achieving the SDGs) including issues relating to indigenous rights and access [4], climate change [26], biodiversity conservation [27] and species redistribution [28], food security [29], ocean literacy [30], pollution [31], feedbacks between human and ocean health [32], resource use [33,34], international relations [35] and ocean governance [36]. For each challenge, ‘drivers’—factors that had the potential to impact on the challenge in question, in the context of the SDGs, over the Decade of Ocean Science—were identified that could be influenced to achieve desirable outcomes [32].…”