Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal
Defining key principles for “fishery sensitive” mCDR
This resources page supports our Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal initiative.
mCDR Resource Center
Marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) is a new and experimental set of strategies. Many questions remain with regard to these methods’ technological readiness, carbon removal abilities, and ecological and social impacts. The resources on this page are here to build the fishing community’s essential literacy in the science and governance of mCDR, helping to ensure that we have a prominent role in guiding this field as it matures.
Materials for mCDR Virtual Roundtables
Resources in this section are being used to support a series of virtual roundtables convened through the Fishery Friendly Climate Action Campaign for members of the fishing community to brainstorm initial ideas related to fishery-sensitive mCDR governance, best practices for community engagement, and co-production of knowledge in an mCDR context. Learn more and sign up for a roundtable here.
Video: Intro to mCDR for commercial fishermen
This 42-minute video is required pre-watching for roundtable participants.
Roundtable worksheets
Roundtable participants will work together to fill in these worksheets during the sessions.
Part 1
Module 1: Defining Core Principles
This 1-hour module focuses on defining the core principles of “fishery sensitive” mCDR. For instance, what research is needed to ensure mCDR minimizes negative impacts and maximizes any positive co-benefits to fishery ecosystems? How can we apply concepts of precaution and adaptive management to ensure that the permitting and development of mCDR doesn’t get out ahead of our scientific understanding of its impacts and efficacy?
Module 2: Co-production of knowledge
This 1-hour module focuses on integrating the knowledge and participation of fishermen alongside that of scientific researchers as the field of mCDR develops. How can fishermen’s ecological knowledge be used to inform mCDR research? At what points in research design, implementation, and analysis do fishermen want to be involved, and how can we ensure their participation actively shapes next steps?
Part 2
Module 3: Governance
This 1-hour module focuses on how mCDR permitting, siting, and governance can be designed to achieve equitable distribution of direct benefits, mitigation of adverse impacts, and maximization of co-benefits for fishery ecosystems and communities. It also includes a discussion of how mCDR research and commercial-scale implementation should be financed so that the public interest is well represented at all stages and scales of development.
Module 4: Stakeholder Engagement
This 1-hour module focuses on structures and strategies for optimizing the fishing community’s engagement in mCDR research and governance. We address topics such as when to engage, structures for engagement, and how to address power imbalances that can otherwise make engagement perfunctory. We talk about who needs to be involved from the fishing community, from the research and mCDR communities, and from neutral third parties to ensure that engagement is accessible and accountable to all.
Additional Information and Resources
Resources in this section are not required for roundtable participants. They are here to help orient members of the fishing industry who are interested in expanding their literacy on science, governance issues, and innovation related to mCDR.
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Conversations on Ocean Carbon: A U.S. West Coast and Alaska Perspective
This recorded webinar series is co-organized by the California Ocean Science Trust, California Current Acidification Network, and Alaska Ocean Acidification Network to deliver the best available information on marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) and to explore concepts related to coastal ocean carbon. The series creates a direct dialogue among industry members, tribes, natural resource managers and scientists within the California Current and Alaska Ecosystems. Through these co-designed webinars, participants gain a better understanding of mCDR technologies, limitations, risks, and learn how to become engaged.
ClimateWorks Ocean CDR Animated Explainer Videos
These short explainer videos use animation to graphically explain various mCDR methods.
NOAA's Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Engagement
Gabby Kitch from NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program provides an overview of mCDR methods, NOAA's role in the space, and connections to larger U.S. government initiatives.
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A Research Strategy for Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal and Sequestration
This report, published in 2022 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, assesses what is currently known about the benefits, risks, and potential for responsible scale-up of six specific ocean-based CDR strategies. It describes the research needed to advance understanding of those approaches and address knowledge gaps. The resulting research agenda is meant to provide an improved and unbiased knowledge base for the public, stakeholders, and policymakers to make informed decisions on next steps.
Strategy for NOAA Carbon Dioxide Removal Research
This document was developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Carbon Dioxide Removal Task Team (CDR Task Team), a cross-NOAA interdisciplinary team with relevant expertise in climate and carbon, coastal and open ocean science, aquaculture development, and ocean conservation. This report was published in May 2023.
A Code of Conduct for Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Research
This Code of Conduct exclusively applies to mCDR research. Its purpose is to ensure that the impacts of mCDR research activities themselves are adequately understood and accounted for as they progress. It provides a roadmap of processes, procedures, and activities that project leads should follow to ensure that decisions regarding whether, when, where, and how to conduct mCDR research are informed by relevant ethical, scientific, economic, environmental, and regulatory considerations.
The Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal Decision-Making Landscape
This overview of “who’s who” in the mCDR ecosystem focuses on four questions: Who is involved? Who should be? What do they want to know? What do they worry about?
Precautionary Principles for Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal Research
This four-page statement makes the case that “principled ocean CDR research will help safeguard ocean systems” and “precautionary, inclusive, and well planned ocean CDR research must be conducted to ensure these technologies can benefit the climate without harming the environment and people.”
This report by the World Resources Institute distills the potential scale of mCDR, expected costs, risks, co-benefits, and areas of research needed for seven mCDR approaches. It proposes an overall approach centered on informed and responsible development and deployment of mCDR that balances the urgency of emissions reductions against the environmental and social risks of mCDR, including halting development where risks outweigh expected benefits.
A Comprehensive Program to Prove or Disprove Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies by 2030
This eight-page living document by Ocean Visions outlines a research agenda to answer fundamental questions about both the additionality and durability of carbon sequestered using mCDR approaches, and their environmental and social impacts.
Columbia University Sabin Center Publications on mCDR Law and Policy
Columba University legal scholar Romany Webb and colleagues have published a wealth of analyses on international, federal, and sub-national legal and policy dimensions of mCDR research and implementation.
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Ocean Visions is a science-based, nonprofit conservation organization that works with and across diverse sectors and disciplines to identify, co-design, evaluate, and support the implementation of bold, ocean-based solutions to counter and reverse climate impacts to the ocean. Resources include a global map of mCDR field trials and a set of interactive roadmaps focused on specific mCDR methods.
[C]Worthy’s mCDR Ecosystem Map
The mCDR Ecosystem Map by the nonprofit [C]Worth illustrates both the flow of the emerging mCDR industry as well many stakeholders involved in researching, governing, developing, and deploying mCDR solutions.