The Roadmap to Oceans and Climate Action (ROCA) was a multi-stakeholder initiative spanning from 2016-2021 which encouraged and mobilized governments, international agencies, NGOs, scientific institutions, private sector, and subnational authorities to advance the ocean and climate agenda (especially in the UNFCCC, the UN Ocean Conference, and in other United Nations fora) in all countries. ROCA was launched in at the UNFCCC COP 22 in Marrakech, Morocco and worked to implement the Strategic Action Roadmap on Oceans and Climate: 2016-2021, which was first discussed at the Oceans Day at COP 21 in Paris 2015, and then prepared in detail by 37 international experts throughout 2016 and highlighted at the Oceans Action Day at COP 22 Marrakech in 2016.
The ROCA initiative promoted the wide dissemination of information targeting decision-makers at the UNFCCC and beyond. These efforts emphasize the undeniable evidence of the importance of oceans, the central role the oceans play in regulating the climate system, and the dire consequences of inaction, especially through the organization of Oceans Action Days at the UNFCCC COPs and through the ROCA Initiative’s annual reports on Assessing Progress on Ocean and Climate Action.
As the ROCA initiative has now concluded, a strategic planning Working Group of the Global Ocean Forum is currently developing a successor strategy that will take into account the need for:
1) expansion of the ocean and climate community’s engagement to include organizations which have a comparative advantage in leading the work on the candidate priority areas of the new strategy;
2) establishment of an informal but stable funding mechanism to support the implementation of the new strategy; and
3) keeping track of and building on how its initiatives can successfully contribute to the achievement of the Paris Agreement targets.
For more information on the ROCA initiative and to read the latest report on Assessing Progress on Ocean and Climate Action, please review the links below.
Roadmap to Oceans and Climate Action Report
Assessing Progress on Ocean and Climate Action: 2016-2017
Assessing Progress on Ocean and Climate Action: 2018
Assessing Progress on Ocean and Climate Action: 2019
Roadmap to Oceans and Climate Action (ROCA) Initiative 