Reach

Building Global Capacity and Societal Support

Ocean Visions’ mission and work to restore ocean health and stabilize the climate requires action across many geographies, countries, cultures, and sectors to strengthen the political, social, and institutional conditions for potential solutions to be explored, tested, and governed responsibly.

The Reach program is Ocean Visions’ platform for this global engagement. It supports a broad and diverse community of early adopters and first movers around the world, particularly in regions most affected by climate impacts.

Reach underpins and supports Ocean Visions’ Reduce, Remove, and Repair programs by prioritizing the international systems, relationships, and institutional capacities needed to explore, evaluate, and govern ocean–climate solutions.

Through its work, Reach connects Ocean Visions’ solutions agenda with the partnerships, governance processes, and regional leadership needed to move responsible ocean–climate action from ambition into institutional practice. The program focuses on the systems and relationships that shape whether ocean–climate solutions move from concept toward informed, accountable, and effective action.

Why Reach

Ocean–climate solutions intersect with governance systems, infrastructure, economic policy, scientific capacity, and public institutions. The success of any particular potential solution will depend on how it interacts with existing systems, so deep knowledge of the different social and cultural contexts, decision-making processes, time horizons, and politics is crucial. Advancing ocean–climate solutions requires understanding and addressing questions beyond just scientific and technological merit.

Decisions about ocean-climate research priorities and associated governance, public participation, and capacity development are made within local ecological, social, economic, and institutional contexts. Local priorities must be balanced with urgency of climate action and international policy commitments.

The Reach program works to support more informed and equitable participation in these decisions by supporting regional leadership, convening relevant actors, and building partnerships across institutions, sectors, and geographies.

How the Reach Program Works

Reach works across three key areas:

Regional Capacity-Building

Policy & Governance Development

Global Engagement & Partnerships

Global Ecosystem for Ocean Solutions (GEOS)

GEOS is a core program of Ocean Visions operating within and endorsed by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. GEOS supports regional capacity development and coordinated learning through support for Ocean-Climate Innovation Hubs, Innovation Fellows and Senior Fellows. GEOS connects a growing portfolio of ocean-climate solutions projects and actors around the world through the shared framework of the UN Ocean Decade.

GEOS connects regional actors working across science, policy, infrastructure, and institutional development, supporting countries, research institutions, civil society organizations, and partners as they explore the opportunities and challenges of emerging ocean–climate solutions.

Advancing Effective Policy and Governance

Our policy and governance work prioritizes the development of frameworks and decision-support tools for responsible ocean–climate research, development, and demonstration. We work to strengthen enabling environments for RD&D while advancing safeguards, accountability, and public-interest decision-making.

Ocean Visions policy work seeks to:

Bring new scientific evidence into policy and regulatory decision-making.
Support the development of enabling governance and regulatory frameworks for responsible RD&D of novel ocean-climate solutions.
Advocate for increased coherence across the international regimes that govern climate, biodiversity, and oceans.

Ocean Visions’ policy work helps innovators and first movers navigate complexity, uncertainty, and emerging ethical questions as ocean–climate approaches move from scientific exploration toward policy and regulatory considerations.

Global Engagement and Partnerships

Ocean–climate solutions originate in a widely distributed manner and are then shaped through research and scientific collaboration taking place in regional, national, and international structures. Creating greater connectivity, synergies, and partnerships across geographies and sectors amongst those advancing solutions is a critical objective of the Reach program.

Ocean Visions works to strengthen relationships and collaborations among governments, scientific institutions, civil society organizations, innovators, and other actors working on ocean–climate challenges. Through strategic partnerships, informal diplomacy, and participation in international processes, the Reach program helps expand the community of actors contributing to discussions around research, governance, and innovation.

This work seeks to strengthen the ability of governments, institutions, civil society organizations, and communities to participate in key processes and help shape emerging ocean–climate agendas.

Dive Deeper

Reduce

Advancing Ocean-Based Pathways to Decarbonization

Remove

Advancing Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal

Repair

Prolonging the Health of Critical Marine Ecosystems and Averting Dangerous Climate Tipping Points