By Fuad Bateh, Former Delegate to BBNJ Intergovernmental Conference and Lisa Levin, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Extracted from the report on Assessing Ocean and Climate Action Progress, 2022-2023

The text below is an excerpt from a section focused on climate change and the BBNJ Agreement written in November 2023 for the report on Assessing Progress on Ocean and Climate Action: 2022-2023. To read in full, please see section 10.1 of the report, linked here.

To address biodiversity loss, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework has set the goal of protecting 30% of the planet’s area, including marine and coastal areas. In the marine space, this can only be achieved by significantly increasing the 1.4% of protections in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). Biodiversity in this realm (from microbes and phytoplankton to fish and whales) provides extensive carbon services (carbon fixation, transfer, storage and sequestration) responsible for controlling the climate.

Conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in ABNJ are the focus of a new international BBNJ Agreement opened for signature by states on 20 September 2023. In an encouraging diplomatic flurry, 66 UN member states, the European Union and one permanent observer to the UN signed the instrument on the opening day, which further increased to 83 signatures by the close of the UN High-Level Week (with an increase to 87 signatures, and 2 ratifications, as of 26 February 2024). There is potential to harness the elements of this agreement to increase climate resilience and support the critical carbon cycling services provided by the ocean. These goals are explicitly recognized in sub-paragraph (h) of Article 7 General Principles and Approaches of the BBNJ Agreement which states: “An approach that builds ecosystem resilience, including to adverse effects of climate change and ocean acidification, and also maintains and restores ecosystem integrity, including the carbon cycling services that underpin the role of the ocean in climate”. Of note, the climate provisions of the BBNJ Agreement have already been highlighted in recent submission to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to inform the requested Advisory Opinion on Climate Change and International Law.

The four elements of the BBNJ Agreement are all important. These include 1) marine genetic resources, including the fair and equitable sharing of benefits; 2) measures such as area-based management tools, including marine protected areas; 3) environmental impact assessments; and 4) capacity building and the transfer of marine technology. Area based management tools, especially fully and highly protected MPAs and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), can sustain the diversity that allows adaptation to climate change, provide corridors and refugia for species migrating in response to climate change, and can conserve and restore species and ecosystems that remove and sequester CO2 from the atmosphere. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes can consider direct and cumulative climate impacts, ensuring that activities in ABNJ minimize climate risk. Strategic environmental assessments (SEAs), while not mandatory, may prove a vital tool for regional collaboration to assess current and potential future climate and other impacts and identify collective research priorities, as a basis for coordinated action. Marine genetic resources (MGR) can help with the identification of species and assessment of ecosystems to be targeted for climate solutions with global benefits and benefit sharing. Even the future monetary benefit sharing derived from commercialization of MGRs that will be channeled back to the BBNJ Agreement funding mechanism can increase financial resources to undertake more pro-climate and pro-biodiversity activities. Climate can and should feature in capacity development and marine technology transfer, and this is reflected in Annex II, to provide the scientific observation, monitoring, modeling and mapping required for successful climate-positive implementation of the BBNJ Agreement elements.

ABNJ is often considered beyond the explicit scope of the UNFCCC regime, which focuses largely on national and regional efforts. However, the UNFCCC does commit States Parties in Article 4 to “promote sustainable management, and promote and cooperate in the conservation and enhancement, as appropriate, of sinks and reservoirs of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, including biomass, forests and oceans as well as other terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems”; Article 5.1 of the Paris Agreement further re-enforces this commitment: “Parties should take action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases as referred to in Article 4 paragraph 1(d), of the Convention”. Thus, the fact that activities occur in ABNJ should not technically be a clear policy barrier to comprehensively optimizing global carbon services. During the UNFCCC Parties ́ mandated Ocean and Climate Dialogue the relevance of the BBNJ Agreement was acknowledged as one of “five recent achievements in multilateral negotiations in the global race to protect the ocean.” Furthermore, the Dialogue ́s report encouraged addressing the perceived barrier by recommending the strengthening of institutional linkages as a Key Message to Parties and to COP28. Additional recommendations include specifically building synergies for coastal and marine nature-based solutions and biodiversity and blue carbon ecosystem-based management across international policy processes. This can serve to further centralize the role of the ocean in climate change mitigation and adaptation through UNFCCC processes, including the Global Stocktake (GST).

It will be essential for ocean champions to encourage States and non-state actors to harness a new breakthrough initiative for biodiversity and nature-based carbon services in ABNJ. Beyond the BBNJ agreement, human activities that emit or release CO2 as well as those intended to sequester CO2 (CDR) in ABNJ will require global scrutiny and harmonization across a range of international governance bodies: UNFCCC, International Seabed Authority (ISA), International Maritime Organization (IMO), London Convention and London Protocol (LC/LP), Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and others. While the BBNJ Agreement’s EIA and SEA procedures may be applicable in part, new governance arrangements for both CDR and Solar Radiation Management affecting ABNJ may need to be considered to avoid certain technologies slipping through the existing regulatory mechanisms.