The ocean was on the agenda at London Climate Action Week last week, but not nearly as much as it should be given its importance as the worlds largest carbon sink and a source of crucial climate solutions.

I spoke about the Ocean Changemaker Mindset at the Ocean-Climate Nexus event at London Business School, organised by Amal Ketata.

Key points from my talk:

🌊 To develop an ocean changemaker mindset we need to start with the integrated nature of the problem (the polycrisis) to ensure an integrated set of solutions.

🌊 The climate crisis doesn’t just play out in the ocean, the seas also offer crucial solutions to each of the planetary crises. For example, blue carbon ecosystems such as mangroves, tidal salt marshes and seagrass are a more efficient carbon sink than many terrestrial solutions.

🌊 Albert Einstein said, you can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it. We therefore need to embrace mindset shifts to ensure decision-makers develop an ocean mindset.

🌊 A just and regenerative ocean mindset goes beyond risk mitigation, zero harm and do good mindsets. It embraces the ocean as a source of regeneration and sees humans as part of the ocean. It aims at changing the goals of critical systems (such as food and energy) from extraction to regeneration and justice.

🌊 Key shifts are needed to embed the ocean mindset in decision-making, including a stronger focus on the quality of transitions, causes (rather than symptoms), and more decentralised governance models.

The Blue Earth Forum (part of the Blue Earth Summit) also put the ocean on the agenda. See my separate summary article of the event here.

It is up to us in the ocean community to keep pushing for the ocean to be more prominent as a source of climate solutions. Onwards and upwards!