Business and Investment Representatives Begin Meeting Monthly to Advance Private Sector Leadership in Restoring Ocean Health and Sequestering Carbon Dioxide
The initial World Ocean Council (WOC) “Ocean Restoration and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Roundtable” virtually gathered participants from the business and investment community on 24 November.
The WOC Ocean Restoration and CDR Roundtable brings together:
- Investors interested or involved in Ocean Restoration and Ocean CDR
- Companies who are seeking to support or invest in Ocean CDR as part of meeting carbon reduction targets
- Enterprises which are creating Ocean CDR / Ocean Restoration businesses
- Carbon removal marketplace organizations
The next meeting of the WOC Ocean Restoration and CDR Roundtable takes place on 17 December 2020 at 1900 GMT/UMC. Business and investment representatives interested in participating are invited to contact WOC at .
The Roundtable covers the full range of ocean restoration, and Negative Emissions Technologies (Ocean NET) strategies, approaches and technologies. Building on WOC efforts since 2012 regarding these issues, the forum provides the structure and process for pre-competitive private sector leadership, collaboration and action among the growing number of businesses and investors interested or involved in ocean restoration and CDR.
These efforts also link to WOC Ocean Investor/Funds Roundtable, which began meeting in early 2020, building on the highly successful 8th WOC Sustainable Ocean Summit (SOS). The SOS 2019, with its theme of “Investing in Ocean Futures: Finance and Innovation for the Blue Economy” is the most comprehensive global blue finance event organized to date.
The WOC Ocean Restoration and CDR Roundtable is working to:
- Facilitate company efforts in achieving carbon-reduction/carbon-neutral commitments by connecting them with viable ocean CDR opportunities
- Consider how Ocean Restoration and Ocean CDR can be assessed, screened and prioritized for research, development and deployment efforts and resources
- Develop and advance a careful, science-based and business-smart process is required to determine what role the ocean can potentially play
- Determine the important timelines, legal and policy issues, resources and budgets (e.g. for research), financial options to deliver private sector Ocean Restoration and Ocean CDR solutions aa an important contributor to climate solutions
- Foster global partnerships and relationships to test and validate Ocean Restoration / CDR solutions
- Advance the development the appropriate tools to assess social, legal, environmental and economic aspects of ocean interventions to address climate change
If responsibly developed and implemented, ocean restoration and CDR have the potential to assist with achieving net-zero carbon targets and avoiding the worst effects of climate change.