Projects supported

Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) has been proposed as an approach to increase the ocean’s uptake of atmospheric CO₂. By adding alkaline materials such as olivine or lime to seawater, OAE can potentially boost the ocean’s capacity to store carbon. This project investigates how OAE …

Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) is based on a simple idea: adding alkaline material to the ocean to increase the capacity of seawater to absorb CO₂ from the air and effectively store it in the form of bicarbonate. OAE is accelerating a process that is occurring naturally, through land…

This scientific working group assessed pathways for resilience to counter risks from climate change and ocean acidification, with a focus on atoll islands. Which solutions are ready to put in practice right away, and which ones need more time to mature? Policymakers lack information about which…

Climate-related environmental changes are already having significant consequences for marine organisms and ecosystems and the services they provide to society, and future projections are worrying. Understanding of these consequences is particularly patchy in regions such as the Arctic. The Arctic…

It is now widely recognized both by the scientific community, and increasingly by the public in general, that ocean acidification represents a threat to marine ecosystems. The main known source of acidification is the increased input of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere. When CO2 enters the…

Since 2010, the CSM and the IAEA have co-organized, with the support of the Prince Albert II Foundation, workshops on the socio-economic impact of acidification. The first workshop confirmed the potential socio-economic threats caused by ocean acidification but also highlighted the difficulties in…

Climate change already affects marine and coastal ecosystems and ecosystem services. Risk levels strongly depend on future rates of greenhouse gas emissions; yet even a global surface warming of between 1.5-2.0°C by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial levels, consistent with the…

The 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was hosted in Paris in 2015. Its outcome was critically important as countries negotiated the greenhouse gases emissions trajectories in the next decades to century (the Paris Agreement).…

The Ocean Acidification International Reference User Group (OA-iRUG), led by IUCN and supported by the Prince Albert II Foundation, brought together scientists and actors from civil society, policy and the private sector to convey scientific research on ocean acidification in a language…

The Symposia on the Ocean in a High-CO2 World are the largest international conferences on ocean acidification, organized every four years. The Principality of Monaco hosted the Second Symposium in the series in 2008, which lead to the publication of the Monaco Declaration, signed by the 126…