Gallo finds 70% of climate pact signatories include oceans in climate change action plans

On the eve of international climate talks taking place in Bonn, Germany, a new study led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego evaluates the extent to which parties to the historic Paris Agreement on climate have considered the oceans in their plans to address climate change.

The study shows that while many countries include the oceans, a striking number do not.

In 2015, under the terms of the Paris Agreement, nearly 200 countries made commitments to manage climate change through a series of measures known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Scripps Oceanography PhD student Natalya Gallo and colleagues created a metric to quantify the extent to which protection of the oceans is addressed in those commitments. The researchers found that 70 percent of the countries that filed their NDCs mention the oceans in their commitments.

Using the metric they created, called a marine focus factor, they found that small island developing states worldwide – from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean to St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean and Kiribati in the South Pacific – were most concerned with ocean issues in their NDCs.

“The purpose of the analysis is to better understand the current political landscape of how marine issues are recognized in national climate plans and to identify gaps that could be remedied during the subsequent revision of NDCs,” said Gallo.

Read more of the press release