Leonardo Valenzuela Pérez, Ph.D.
Senior Director, International Partnerships and Policy
Accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels is the defining task of this decade. Averting dangerous climate change requires rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across energy, industry, transport, and land use, and the ocean has a direct role to play in that effort.
Ocean Visions is participating in the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, convened by Colombia and the Netherlands to advance the commitment made at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels in a just and equitable manner, and to ensure the ocean is fully integrated into the solutions that emerge.
The ocean can provide low-carbon energy, low-carbon food production, and low-carbon transportation, complementing and extending existing efforts across the energy system. These contributions can expand the set of viable pathways for emissions reductions and bring the ocean into the core of the transition. This is where the ocean’s contribution to the energy transition is most direct and immediate.
However, accelerating decarbonization, while essential, is not sufficient on its own.
The ocean has absorbed most of the excess heat and carbon dioxide since industrialization, and that buffering role is now driving persistent changes in ocean temperature, chemistry, and oxygen levels that will continue even as emissions decline. These changes are already transforming marine ecosystems and affecting coastal communities worldwide. At the same time, critical climate-regulating systems, including Arctic sea ice and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, are undergoing shifts on timelines that require immediate attention from decision makers.
The transition must account for this reality, to both accelerate decarbonization and go further.
A Comprehensive Framework: Reduce, Remove, Repair, Reach
Ocean Visions’ work reflects this broader approach, with a comprehensive strategy to stabilize the climate and restore the ocean organized around four priorities: Reduce, Remove, Repair, and Reach.
The Reduce program, as described above, expands the transition by bringing ocean-based pathways for low-carbon energy, food, and transport into the core of the transition agenda.
The Remove program is fundamental to the transition. Even with rapid and sustained decarbonization, meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement requires carbon dioxide removal at scale, as reflected across scenarios assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The ocean, as the planet’s largest active carbon reservoir, offers a set of approaches known as marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) that could operate at a meaningful scale if proven to be safe and effective.
Many of these approaches can be coupled with low-carbon energy systems, and in some cases may create a link between the expansion of renewable energy and the growth of carbon removal capacity. Ocean Visions supports the scientific and governance foundations needed to assess these approaches, with a focus on safety, efficacy, and responsible development.
The Repair program addresses a risk that often goes unspoken. Even if the transition succeeds, some tipping points in ocean and cryosphere systems may still be crossed, as decarbonization and carbon removal are not currently on track to prevent all losses due to climate change. This requires the pace of the transition to be informed by the risk of crossing critical thresholds. Repair focuses on exploring measures that could slow down these processes and protect critical systems, including Arctic sea ice, before tipping points are crossed. Preventing irreversible change is therefore an integral part of the transition.
The Reach program builds the enabling conditions needed to advance potential ocean–climate solutions. It focuses on expanding capacity, strengthening partnerships, and coordinating efforts across regions and sectors. Through the Global Ecosystem for Ocean Solutions, Ocean Visions connects scientific, policy, and practical work, supports regional leadership, and enables learning across geographies so that progress in one context can inform others. This approach also shapes engagement in convenings such as Santa Marta, where insights from the ocean–climate sector can contribute directly to transition discussions.
This comprehensive approach informs Ocean Visions’ decision not to accept funding from fossil fuel companies, as maintaining independence is essential to the credibility of science-based recommendations in the transition away from fossil fuels.
Integrating the Ocean into Global Transition Pathways
The conference in Santa Marta is a key moment in the transition away from fossil fuels, as governments, industry, and civil society come together to take on this challenge directly. That conversation, and future of the transition away from fossil fuels process, can be strengthened by a comprehensive strategy that places the ocean in a central role.
Ocean Visions is in Santa Marta to make the case that any transition roadmap must integrate the ocean, and support governments ready to act on that ambition.