Policy brief : global and regional management of ocean acidification

Abstract

Anthropogenic CO2 emission is the main contributor to Ocean Acidification (OA) because the dissolution of this gas in seawater leads to changes in its chemistry resulting in seawater acidity and a lowering of the calcium carbonate saturation state. Apart from impacting severely life at sea, OA acts in conjunction with other environmental drivers connected to climate, such as increased ocean temperature and lower oxygen content, resulting in combined synergistic or combined negative effects to marine life. Despite the increasing scientific certainty on its scale and consequences, and on the need for immediate action, OA stands as a highly overlooked item on the environmental agenda, generally neglected by policymakers at the international, regional and domestic level. Scholars from different disciplines have pointed out the key challenges in dealing with OA in the current fragmented governance landscape, and highlighted that a coordinated governance effort is needed to address OA effectively. At the international level OA is neither adequately integrated in the climate change regime, which is considered a crucial forum for OA, nor in other multilateral environmental treaties, such as the Convention of Biological Diversity, or the Law of the Sea. At the European level, national policies and legislation addressing OA remains scarce and uncoordinated.