The race to bolster the ocean’s potential to combat climate change

The ocean offers "one of the biggest opportunities to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere," Shaun Fitzgerald told Reuters this week. "I think it's beholden on us for future generations and future ecosystems to be looking at this very seriously."

For World Ocean Day, they explored some of the marine-based carbon dioxide removal approaches currently being explored across the globe, including mangrove restoration and ocean alkalinity enhancement. 

"The oceans have significant potential to take up more CO2 from the atmosphere," Shaun adds on LinkedIn. "But there are challenges too, so we need to tackle these as part of comprehensive research projects. These need to be done soon so that society can make informed decisions on different CO2 removal approaches and start to make a dent on greenhouse gas levels. At the moment total emissions and levels are rising each year."

Shaun, director of the Centre for Climate Repair, is part of a European consortium assessing some of these potential methods; he spoke about the project, SEAO2-CDR, at various COP30 Brazil events last year. You can find out more about the work on their website.