posidonia meadow, on august 18, 2016 in Les Embiez, France. The Mediterranean represents a hotspot of marine biodiversity. With only 1% of the world's oceans and seas, it is home to nearly 10% of the world's marine species. There are also hundreds of endemic species. .The ocean could provide up to 3 billion tonnes of the 5 billion tonnes of emissions removal needed to reach net zero.
Such value can also be attributed at a national level. Caroline Price, head of nature and environment at The Crown Estate, said: “The UK’s marine natural and coastal ecosystems play a critical role in underpinning our economy, health and wellbeing. Our coasts, estuaries and offshore waters contribute an estimated £47 billion to the economy and support over 500,000 jobs.
The goal is to find new ways to funnel finance and build resilience within the UK, and Paradis argues that natural capital markets provide a route to leverage payments for ecosystem services and unlock much-needed private finance where public and philanthropic funding is often stretched. Understanding ocean processes is a relatively new process. One of the longest running ocean research programmes, Ocean Seascape, has only been in operation since 2002. It uses a suite of oceanographic and meteorological instruments, located onboard Royal Caribbean Group ships to track the structure of currents, sea surface temperature, carbon dioxide concentrations, and salinity taken along the repetitive ship routes.