During the thirtieth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP30), Brazil and France announced the creation of the Ocean Working Group, whose objective is to mobilize public and private funding and expand technical support to integrate ocean-based solutions into countries' climate plans.
“Never before have so many heads of state aligned themselves so clearly on the need to place the ocean at the center of the global climate response,” said Aloisio de Melo, National Secretary for Climate Change at Brazil's Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
The initiative was joined by countries such as Australia, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Fiji, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Kenya, Palau, Portugal, Seychelles, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
The initiative encourages countries to integrate ocean solutions into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are the commitments that countries make under the Paris Agreement to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and increase their capacity to adapt to the effects of climate change.
“The idea of oceans as a tool against climate change and not just as a victim has begun to be socialized much more,” said Marcela Gutiérrez, director and founder of Azul, a civil organization focused on ocean justice in the United States with a Latino community.
During COP30, a group of civil society organizations launched a letter calling on representatives of countries that, in addition to including ocean-based climate solutions in their NDCs, will unlock ocean funding through direct funding to island and coastal communities, and blue funding windows.
Mexico: advances and commitments with the oceans
For COP30, countries had to submit their updated NDCs but only 120 out of 198 have submitted this document. Although 9 out of 10 countries included ocean measures in their NDCs, the ocean is still underrepresented in climate strategies and receives less than 1% of global funding.
Mexico submitted its NDC during the COP, and this included the oceans for the first time in the adaptation component.
The document proposes implementing ocean-based climate solutions to reduce its vulnerability and recognizes its importance as a carbon sink, that is, as a natural reservoir that absorbs and captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
It also establishes strengthening research on acidification and temperature variation in ocean and continental waters; implementing adaptation actions contemplated in the National Seas and Coasts Policy; protecting vulnerable marine species; and promoting international cooperation to address emerging diseases in corals and phenomena such as sargassum.
“Quite frankly, Mexico has not seen in depth the contribution of the oceans to climate change,” said Pedro Álvarez, head of the National Commission for Protected Natural Areas (Conanp).
He announced that the goal adopted by the Government of Mexico to protect 30% of the country's land and marine surface by 2030 includes the objective of increasing marine protected areas to 20 million hectares.
Other measures promoted for the protection of the oceans, Álvarez said, have been support for a moratorium against underwater mining in 2023, and the intention to create marine biological corridors that integrate fishing shelters, zones of marine prosperity and Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (Omec).
For her part, Alicia Bárcena, head of the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), said that the National Environmental Restoration Program is under way to protect dunes and mangroves, fundamental ecosystems for coastal communities as natural barriers to hydrometeorological phenomena such as hurricanes.
Debts to the ocean
Despite these advances, among the Latino population there are other concerns about problems affecting the oceans, such as offshore oil and fossil gas extraction, plastic pollution and illegal fishing. This was discovered by the Azul organization through the results of the National Blue Survey “Latinos and the Ocean” that it conducted in 2024.
For Gutiérrez, the recognition of the ocean as an integral part of climate solutions has been progressing, first with the creation of a United Nations Conference on the Oceans in 2023, and this could be accelerated with the entry into force of the “High Seas Treaty” in January 2026, which seeks to protect ocean areas that are outside the jurisdiction of countries and which will have its own funding mechanism.
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