Deep-sea impacts of climate interventions

Waterloo professor is part of an emerging field that calls for establishing a governance framework for ocean-based climate interventions. Faculty of Environment From its current capacity as a carbon sink to its potential as a site for generating renewable energy, and managing solar radiation, the ocean is increasingly at the forefront of discussions around climate mitigation strategies. However, efforts to develop ocean-based climate interventions expose the ocean to various threats that harm biodiversity, pollute, and change its very chemistry. These negative impacts raise crucial questions about how we balance fighting climate change and the health of the ocean. Dr. Neil Craik, law professor in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development and Waterloo Climate Interventions Strategies Lab member, is part of a growing area of research critically assessing the impacts and governance challenges of large-scale climate interventions in the world's oceans. Recently, he was part of a team of experts assembled by the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative that were tasked with assessing and recommending paths on how to tackle this emerging challenge. Their new paper, , which appears in the journal Science , explores the environmental risks of climate interventions, the current ocean governance challenges and what needs to be done to address them. The paper outlines that the threats to the ocean, particularly the deep sea, have emerged from various human pressures, such as overfishing, biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, climate change, acidification, and deoxygenation.