Blue NDCs merge ocean protection and climate goals — but how will these goals be realised?

Last November at COP30, 17 nations — led by France and Brazil — united around the Blue NDC Challenge, which calls for including ocean-based solutions in national climate action plans. The challenge launched earlier that year during the third UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France. 

By making these commitments part of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), countries are coupling urgent ocean protection goals with climate action so that both are stronger, together.

Three ways ocean and climate action naturally intersect

Climate and ocean policy are becoming more connected — for good reason. Climate progress depends on what happens in and around the ocean. As the UNFCCC puts it, “The ocean is humanity’s most powerful ally in the fight against climate change.” From regulating the climate system to supporting food security and trade, the ocean is deeply intertwined with both climate risks and solutions.

1. The ocean is a huge carbon sink
   The ocean is widely considered the world’s largest natural carbon sink for atmospheric CO₂. It has absorbed an estimated 30% of cumulative anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions since the 1980s and absorbs 90% of the excess heat generated by these emissions. Coastal ecosystems like mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes store significant amounts of blue carbon.
   
   Plus, a new emergent era of ocean-based CO₂ removal technologies could help strengthen natural carbon storage in marine systems, and complement efforts to protect ocean carbon sinks from practices like bottom trawling.
   
2. Fisheries and marine ecosystems need help to buffer against a warming and acidifying ocean environment
   Ocean ecosystems underpin food security and coastal economies. More than 3 billion people rely on seafood as a major source of protein, while fisheries and aquaculture support millions of livelihoods worldwide. Yet rising sea temperatures, acidification — primarily from absorbing the excess atmospheric CO₂ — and other climate-induced changes risk undermining fisheries.
   
   Climate action and climate-ready fisheries can help enhance marine ecosystems, while also strengthening long-term coastal resilience in the face of sea level rise.
   
3. Decarbonising shipping, cruising, and other ocean industries can be an important part of global climate solutions
   Ocean industries remain a significant emissions challenge. Shipping alone accounts for nearly 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, alongside emissions from ports, offshore operations, and cruising tourism.
   
   Blue NDCs can help accelerate the shift toward lower-carbon maritime industries. This can help ocean industries mitigate their own carbon footprint, while also scaling demand for green and low-carbon solutions that can have cross-over benefits in other industries. For example, green ammonia as a shipping fuel could propel cost reductions that benefit fertiliser production and global agriculture.

Closing the “ocean opportunity gap” with Blue NDC implementation

Ocean action has historically received <1% of global climate finance, despite estimates that ocean-based solutions could deliver up to 35% of needed emissions cuts. Mitigation still makes up only 12% of commitments, and marine protection efforts continue to lag behind pledges. 

Blue NDC efforts aim to close the “ocean opportunity gap” with a few specific tactics. These include establishing a Blue NDC Taskforce to spread awareness that ocean resilience has co-benefits for humans and nature alike, from reducing emissions to fostering coastal economies development. The Taskforce would mobilise political leadership, unlock finance, and expand technical support to governments implementing ocean commitments. 

Blue NDC proponents at COP30 also introduced the Blue Package, an initial roadmap built around achieving the five Ocean Breakthroughs by 2030: protecting and restoring at least 30% of the ocean; building resilient aquatic food systems for 3 billion people; delivering 380 GW of offshore renewable energy capacity; decarbonising shipping while reducing impacts on marine biodiversity; and halving emissions from coastal tourism while building resilience in vulnerable destinations.

The 2025 NDC updates suggest broader momentum for coordinated ocean-climate action — at least 61 of 66 include at least some ocean measures.

Putting data intelligence to work across emissions and ecosystems

Making Blue NDCs an effective reality starts with the right data and analytics strategy. The world needs to understand what's really happening across 1) shipping lanes (climate/emissions data) and 2) coastal waters (ocean protection data). 

1.  Shipping emissions data to put the climate in climate+ocean action 

Ocean shipping moves over 80% of the world’s goods, leaving behind a heavy carbon wake — to the tune of ~1B tonnes of annual emissions. And that number is on track to double by 2050.

Tracking emissions is essential to reducing them, in collaboration with carriers, shippers, port cities, flag states, and other stakeholders. Historically, reliable emissions data was hard to come by. Not anymore.

As a founding member and the shipping sector lead of nonprofit coalition Climate TRACE, OceanMind is helping power timely, open, and granular emissions data for domestic and international shipping. Every month, the coalition releases updated data on emissions sources for every sector on earth, including shipping (via transportation). In this database, emissions are split and assigned to origin and destination ports. 

(Note: We can also parse the data in many other useful ways, including by shipping route; ocean activity hotspots; MPA; cruise line, shipping carrier, or other company delineation; and more. Contact us to learn more.)

Concrete examples of what this kind of visibility helps make possible include: 

• Just in Time arrivals. Climate TRACE has identified Just in Time arrival as a top strategy for reducing shipping emissions, with port loitering reductions potentially yielding an average savings of around ~10% in international shipping and ~12% per port in domestic shipping.
  
• Fossil fuel supply chain visibility. Upstream emissions from fossil fuel extraction, transport, and refining can increase the total embodied carbon of oil, coal, and gas. But the oceangoing portion of the journey has long been a blindspot. Using advanced vessel tracking and port mapping, OFFmap tracks global fossil fuel movements for the actionable intelligence it takes to reduce shipping emissions.

2.  Marine activity data to put the ocean in climate+ocean action 

Protecting 30% of the ocean — one of the core Ocean Breakthroughs — means knowing what's happening in those waters. With ~3.3 million motorised fishing vessels and nearly 17,000 MPAs spread across vast waters, enforcement authorities have long been challenged by a lack of visibility into where to target activity.

Now, satellite imagery, remote sensing, AI, and data science are enabling stakeholders to sharpen oversight in pursuit of a range of strategies, including:

• Monitoring and enforcing marine protected areas. To make MPAs more than “paper parks,” coastal, port, and flag states need the capacity to monitor compliance in near-real time. With Precision Regulation, advanced vessel tracking, satellite radar, and behavioural analysis come together to help enforcement authorities safeguard protected waters — and in turn, the biodiversity that enables ocean ecosystems to adapt to warming and acidification.
  
• Halting illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Overfishing strips the ocean of its ecological resilience, with billions of dollars in catch lost each year to unregulated fleets. Because warming waters cause fish populations to shift, climate change is expected to further accelerate illegal fishing as vessels cross borders to follow their catch. 
  
  By applying machine learning to behavioural analysis and global registries, authorities can cast floodlights over "dark vessels." PSMART — a targeted system developed by OceanMind with input from local partners — streamlines that process, from assessing vessel-entry requests and flagging risks to providing capacity building and implementation support. Ultimately it also helps preserve the ocean's natural capacity to absorb CO₂.

• Verifying responsibly caught seafood certifications. Global seafood networks require transparent oversight to uphold market-based sustainability standards. Without strict verification, hidden practices like heavy bottom trawling go unchecked — a method that alone releases up to 370 million metric tonnes of CO₂ from seabed sediments into the atmosphere each year.
  
  

Fusing satellite and AI-powered monitoring with maritime expertise helps sustainability programmes verify seafood origins, assess fishery impacts, and strengthen regulatory due diligence. This approach rewards responsible fishers, aligning commercial seafood practices with critical climate and ocean protection goals.

Blue NDCs and the route ahead

France, Brazil, and a coalition of other nations are leading the call for ocean-climate solutions. This call requires decisive follow-through if the world is to keep the climate crisis at bay, by giving the ocean a fighting chance to be the hero.

The tools exist, and the path forward is becoming clear: emissions tracked port to port, protected waters monitored in near-real time, and seafood supply chains verified from catch to plate. That's the promise of Blue NDCs delivered — oceans healthy enough to keep doing what they've always done, stabilising the climate for everyone who depends on it.

OceanMind has spent years pairing satellite and AI-powered monitoring with deep maritime enforcement expertise — work enforcement authorities and coalitions like Climate TRACE now rely on around the world — to build the solutions this moment demands. 

The ocean opportunity gap won't close itself. It’s time to put these solutions to work everywhere they’re needed — together.

Interested in how OceanMind can support your Blue NDC commitments? Get in touch with our team.