GundxChange

In these weekly talks, hosted by the Gund Institute for Environment, scholars and leaders exchange ("xChange") new research and solutions for people and planet.

This week, we are running out of time to reduce CO2 enough to prevent at least a 2C (and likely more) global temperature change. Reducing emissions is the first priority. However, the Assessment Report 6 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that we cannot reach net zero without also removing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. For the past several years, I have been working in government, NGOs and the National Academies to think deeply about whether using the ocean to sequester CO2 is necessary and possible to do without causing harm to marine ecosystems and fisheries. More recently, I have been focusing on the international and national governance regimes needed to manage field testing and deployments. Jewett give an overview of mCDR, the different approaches and how it works, and then discuss the status of governance and proposals for new approaches.

About the speaker: Dr. Libby Jewett spent the past nearly 20 years working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Through her leadership of the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, she fostered research on how anthropogenic carbon dioxide affects the ocean and marine life. She worked at the nexus of science andnational and international policy. She served as a lead author on the last three US National Climate Assessments and the last international assessment done under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She also led an international effort through the International Council on the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) to gather experts to assess the risks of marine Carbon Dioxide Removal on fisheries, aquaculture and indigenous communities and helped develop a research agenda assessing impacts of offshore wind on marine ecosystems and fisheries.