Ocean acidification (OA) is broadly recognized as a major problem for marine ecosystems worldwide, with follow-on effects to the economies of ocean-dependent communities. The urgent need to mitigate and minimize the impacts of OA is a scientific and political priority, as highlighted by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC, 2022) and by the inclusion of OA as a target in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In addition, over 20 years of strong scientific evidence on the impacts of OA provides compelling arguments for urgent CO2 mitigation. Reducing CO2 emissions will require ambitious regulatory and economic instruments, as well as effective systemic changes across governments and societies. It is critical to implement adaptation measures to minimize the impact of OA, among other key environmental stressors, as the mitigation process takes time, and the impacts of OA are already felt globally. Assessing the impacts of solutions and their potential implementations requires information at local scales, considering the variabilities in marine ecosystem responses to OA (e.g., local adaptation, species redundancies).
One of the main challenges for designing OA mitigation and adaptation strategies is the lack of data on chemical changes and biological impacts from developing countries. A minority of scientific publications on OA stems from research undertaken in the Global South. For example, only 14% of publications describing OA studies in the Atlantic Ocean have a first author from the Global South (OA-ICC bibliographic database 2024; https://www.iaea.org/services/oa-icc/science-and-collaboration/data-access-and-management). This highlights the lesser involvement of researchers from the Global South in the field of OA and the need for further training to develop local leadership. Studying OA requires implementation of specific and complex best practice methodology, for example, for the measurement of seawater carbonate chemistry (e.g., Feely et al., 2023). The successful execution of sustained measurements and experimentation in developing countries is hindered by a general lack of basic OA literacy and exacerbated by a lack of infrastructure, instrumentation, and financial support.
Dupont S., Edworthy C., Sánchez-Noguera C., Metian M., Friedrich J., Flickinger S., Bantelman A., Galdino C., Graba F., Anghelici O. & Hansson L., in press. The IAEA Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre capacity building program: empowering member states to address and minimize the impacts of ocean acidification. Oceanography. Article.
