Bertarelli Summer2024 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 64
a year. We know that because the last time the great
ice sheets melted, that was how fast the oceans rose.
At that point, the reefs were extremely healthy and
there was little, if any, human presence. Today’s reefs
are not in that same place. We know that there is less
building up, for example, of the coral base that makes
these islands what they are today and which helps
them resist erosion from storms and keep up with
sea-level rise. That’s happening now. That makes the
need for restoration all the more urgent.
I’ve changed what I do—I used to be 100 percent
focused on researching ecosystems but part of what
I do now is study carbon dioxide removal from the
ocean. We will have to do that. We’re going to blow
past one and a half degrees of warming—the target
limit for global warming above pre-industrial levels
set forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement—and we will
blow past 2 degrees sometime soon after that. We
will have to remove carbon dioxide and there’s only
one reservoir that can scale above 20 gigatons of CO₂
removal per year and that’s increasing the alkalinity of
the ocean. It just so happens that increasing the alkalinity of the ocean supports calcification by corals and
everything else in the ocean that has a shell.
So there’s the challenge: A blue carbon opportunity
for small island nations that can help finance this work
and then with the alkalinity, we can put that to use and
benefit these fragile ecosystems.
Baiao: For me, the Island Ocean Connection Challenge
is that kind of visionary exercise. The vision is to restore
40 island-ocean ecosystems by 2030. And by doing that,
we create a portfolio to help island restorations elsewhere and really understand what limits we have and
where we can increase the scale and scope of a project.
It gives a chance to look at the challenge at scale, rather
than on a project-by-project basis and that gives the
opportunity to really hone in on new technologies and
new ways of developing things at scale. It can also help
us get faster and lower the risk and cost of each project.
Graham: We need to be careful that we scale up the science that we’re doing at the same time as scaling up the
practice. We’re scratching the surface at the moment.
We need to understand the whole process of island
restoration and the timescales over which benefits can
accrue—and the amount of learning that we can do
will inform future projects. But this will take decades
of work. We need to develop networks of scientists to
work alongside the practitioners.
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MA RCO BR I VI O. PH OTO GR A PH Y / S H UT T ER STO CK
SAVE THE OCEAN Setting up large marine protected areas and mobile marine protected areas can make a huge
difference to conservation and rewilding efforts, but we’ve been lagging behind. The Great Barrier Reef wasn’t designated
as protected until 1978.
