A landmark Greenpeace report today highlights our reliance on the ocean as Earth’s largest carbon sink. It warns that our changing climate, biodiversity loss and habitat destruction are endangering the processes which underpin the ocean’s ability to sequester and store carbon. This will have ‘far-reaching implications for biodiversity and humankind’.
The report, In Hot Water: The Climate Crisis and the Urgent Need for Ocean Protection, makes the case for a global network of ocean sanctuaries, off limits to human activity. These would build the resilience of marine ecosystems, protect natural “blue carbon” stores, and safeguard the systems that underpin them. Stores of “blue carbon” are the largest carbon stores on earth, containing 50 times the amount of carbon held in the atmosphere and 10 times the amount of carbon in terrestrial vegetation, soils and microbes combined.