 Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our afternoon side event on ocean acidification in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, scaling down risks and scaling up solutions. In the beginning, let's warm up a little bit and ask some questions to the audience. So it's just lifting your hand or not lifting your hand. So would you say you have a good understanding of the concept of ocean acidification? If yes, please raise your hand. Great. Thank you very much. Would you say you are concerned or worried about the impact of ocean acidification has on human society? Thank you. And if you at some point get bored during our side event, you have a little QR code on your seat, you can scan it. And there are some questions which you can answer. So about where you come from, what your background is to get a little bit of knowledge of the audience. So at the beginning of our side event, I would like to start with a video. Could you please play the video? There's a huge time bomb waiting to explode and we still don't know enough about it. These IAEA scientists and their colleagues around the world are working to change that. This acidification has negative effects on a lot of the life in the ocean, including shellfish and corals and a lot of fish that we like to eat. So aquaculture and fisheries are greatly affected. The ocean absorbs a quarter of all CO2 emissions. This helps mitigate climate change, but it also means paying a heavy price. When the carbon dioxide is dissolved in the water, there's a chemical reaction that causes the ocean to become more acidic and slowly. And as we add more and more carbon into the atmosphere, the water is getting slowly more and more acidic. The resulting acidification is threatening fragile marine life. Calcifying organisms such as oysters, crabs, sea urchins, lobsters and corals struggle to form their shells and skeletons. And studies show that some of these organisms start dissolving in an increasingly acidic marine environment. The organisms in the ocean that will be impacted will be impacted in terms of things like increased mortality, their sizes might change, their ability to deal with threats and predation might be impacted as well. It is not just marine life that is impacted. Over three billion people depend on the ocean for their livelihoods. Ocean acidification is of course a phenomenon that is much harder to portray, harder to see. Yet it is now a reality whose economic consequences are directly perceptible and whose effects could be devastating in the long term for many sectors, starting with farming and harvesting of many shellfish and crustaceans already severely impacted. According to the latest report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, scientists predict that by 2100 the ocean could become 150% more acidic and affect half of all marine life. There are many challenges to addressing ocean acidification and one of the big ones is that it's a global issue. Our oceans are completely all over the planet and because of different insolences from rivers and the ocean chemistry varies a lot regionally. That if you measure ocean acidification in one place, you can't understand ocean acidification for the whole globe, which is why it's really important to have a global monitoring presence throughout the world for ocean acidification. This is why the IAEA runs a center to drive global ocean acidification activities following increasing concern from member states about the issue. At IAEA, the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Center really focuses on the science of ocean acidification as well as communicating the dangers of this issue and building capacity and really vulnerable developing regions of the world. And this is really crucial so that they can understand the chemistry conditions in their waters and then make projections about how this chemistry is changing and how it will impact the industries and seafood species that they really care about. Monitoring is essential to understand the extent of the problem, but is there anything that can be done concretely to combat ocean acidification? It's very simple and very difficult to achieve at the same time. The simple solution is avoid emissions and decrease energy consumption. There is no quick fix. Alongside global momentum towards the need to reduce carbon emissions, the studies being done in Monaco and at labs around the world are also examining potential solutions to the issue. One of these is alkalinity enrichment to counterbalance acidification. Nuclear science allows researchers to trace key elements like calcium and learn more about coral growth. One possible outcome of this research is finding small-scale solutions to reduce acidification in key shellfish growing regions. And this combats the acidity locally, so this can be a really effective way to improve shellfish aquaculture or coral restoration projects. But even more importantly, such research gives policymakers the data and insight they need to drive forward climate policy and actions before it is too late. This video was possible thanks to the great film team of IAEA and gives a little indication why at IAEA we are working on ocean acidification. Next slide. So, in addition to using nuclear techniques to, for example, do experimental work to assess the impact of ocean acidification on marine life, but also to assess in a small scale the effects that alkalinity enhancement could have on marine ecosystems. We are hosting the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Center and this is a hub for coordination of international activities on ocean acidification. It was launched in 2012 at the Rio Plus 20 conference as a reaction of the increasing concerns by member states about the impacts of ocean acidification, not only on the ocean, but also on coastal communities. And as it has been said in the video already, we are addressing science, we're doing research, very important capacity building and training tailor-made to the needs of the member states and communication. But this session today is not about the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Center, it's about ocean acidification here in the region where we are today. So with this, I would like to introduce our dedicated speakers today. And it's a great pleasure to introduce to you Montaha Bechpahani. She is research specialist in the Environment and Life Sciences Center at the Kuwait Institute of Scientific Research. She has more than 40 years experience in using radiometrics as a tool for climate related and anthropogenic impact studies. Her current research on response of marine organisms to ocean acidification and ocean warming shows resilience of organisms to climate stressors in the Gulf region. So please give an applause to Mr. Bechpahani. Our next speaker is Dr. Natalie Hilmi. She is an expert in macroeconomics and international finance. And she, since more than 10 years, is head of the section of environmental economics at Centre Scientifique de Monaco. She has a strong collaboration with the IAEA Marine Laboratory on socio-economic impacts of climate change and the cost of action versus cost of inaction. And she is a lead also of the IPCC special report on ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate. And the IPCC main report R6. Please applause. Our next speaker is Jessie Turner. She is executive director of the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification. The Ocean Acidification Alliance is a voluntary initiative of national and subnational governments to raise the ambition for climate action and to transform the global response to climate ocean change. Our fourth speaker and very pleased to have you here is Professor Steve Biddicombe. He is director of science of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. He is co-chair of the Global Ocean Acidification Observation Network Executive Council and co-lead of the UN Oceans Decade Induced Ocean Acidification Research for Sustainability Program. And he is the focal point for the UN SDG community on ocean action 14.3. Please an applause. Our fifth panel member, she is still in a panel downstairs and this is Lena Hansen. Lena Hansen works with the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, where she is a coordinator of initiatives on environmental conservation from terrestrial freshwater to marine ecosystems. She is also coordinating the OASIS initiative, Ocean Acidification and other ocean changes and impacts and solutions led by the foundation. And their work on impacts of ocean acidification in a multiple stressor context, as well as potential solutions to mitigate the impacts. And she was the former associated project officer of the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Center, which we are having at IAEA. Please give an applause to her absence. I hope she will be able to join us later. So now I would like to start with a kickoff presentation. So each of the speaker has about five minutes to give your statements. And we will start with the statement of Ms. Montabech Bahani. And Montabech Bahani will give an insight on the acidification and warming in gulf waters. Please. You could also come here if you want. Yes, it's been more easier. Yes, and see the slides. Hi. Good evening. Just give a brief information about the gulf. Gulp is the 251,000 kilometers per meter connected to the open sea area by the side of Hormuz. And the freshwater is coming from the north from the river Shat Al Arab and Karun and Shat Al Basra. The gulf is around 989 kilometers along the, and the widest, this is the long, and the widest portion is 300 kilometers. And the northwest is 58, 56 kilometers. This was overall very shallow with maximum depth of 78, 90 meter and the average depth 50 meter. Residence time of the gulf water is around two to six years. Excessive in all the delineation activity goes on the gulf and they have the sea surface temperature is quite available and it is open very high. This is the output of the nutrients and the ocean pre-productivity. The high next higher next and sox absorb in the marine area, the acidification in the gulf water, the acidification in the gulf water and loss of the fish and bio delivery, biodiversity. This one's dust storm. The one of this also the contamination of the composition of the contamination of the dust. Then this is the area or the map for the gulf and the quantity of the desalination water which is around 11 million per cubic meter. Sorry for the desalination, the gulf desalination and the temperature in the trend of the observation station and the open gulf north. This is the map of the temperature and the salinity. And then we have the coral leaves and the quake is still, you know, there's some, you know, some coral is still is B. By effect of this acidification, but still it is on the good condition. And this is the picture of the sea, the preaching and the observant of these corals. So next this global acidification observe this is, there's, you know, only the two countries which is be precipitated in the region that in this region, it is Kuwait and Iran or public Islamic, you know. And so the data set are quite limited. So Nick, this is our assessment lab, you know, in the way in case and kisser. I'll quit and sit for scientific research. This is our lab and when did we prepare our sample. This is in our lab. So next. And also this is also all the equipment and the technique which is be used by analysis of the sample and the. And this is them to understanding the classification machine of the major coral and the coral line, algae species inhabiting and the Gulf Arabian Gulf. The to assist the response of the ocean acidification climate change in the term of the surviving dissolution dissolution and across classification and photosystematic and respiration respiration rates. To evaluate the growth and the surviving of the shellfish and the in the Gulf, and to assist the food conservation ratio under different acid acidify condition to understanding of genetic. And that with the ability to changing ocean acidify acidity and temperature. And testing organism, example as couple but show the adaptation and the fourth of. Different. Abundant regulation of the certain gene related to the temperature stress and pH and the multi generation experiment understanding bio ability of the metals under different ocean assist the microplastic and the coastal water. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. So now our fifth panelist has arrived Lena Ansel. The next presentation will be given by Natalie hill me you have five minutes to make your point please. You have a head. I think I can talk is it okay. Can you hear me. Okay. I'm going to present about the ocean acidification risk and impact in the Mediterranean. And about the socio economic aspects mainly because I'm an economist. So this is part of my work. We know that the Mediterranean sea is surrounded by 23 countries that plays a vital role in trade tourism and food supply. The Mediterranean sea is accommodating 20% of global sea bond trade contributing to 10% of the world shipping container throughout and represent 33% of the world tourism so this is very impactful and Thank you. IPCC report is very clear. The Mediterranean sea is getting warm. It's acidifying and it is the oxygenating and sauce together will bring many problems. Next slide please. I'm studying the socio economic impact of ocean acidification I started in 2009. I was in the eco scientific center with the IAA in Monaco. And we use direct indicators like productivity, employment, income and trade. And also some indirect indicator with studies and indirect input. Like the carbon sequestration for example, and this is very important because now when we consider finance, we consider the carbon market and the carbon credits. And this is a very important field of research and I'm studying blue carbon for example in the Mediterranean. It has an impact. Next slide please. Zoom economy tours to ocean acidification are fisheries and aquaculture tourism and recreation and red coral harvest. Next slide please. We can see already potential declines in marine productivity, if in species distribution and the local extension risk for over 50% of exploited fish and marine invertebrates around 2050. So I have a study on the Mediterranean fisheries and we can see that the fish are going upward to your meaning that the most vulnerable countries in North Africa will suffer more because of warming but because also of ocean acidification. The impact especially on the seafood. And next slide please. No, no, no, it was fine. Just one slide. Thank you. The impact is also important on human health, not only through protein intake, but also because of the impact on the different ecosystems and the food chain. Next slide please. We have cost economic cost that we are trying to assess and this is essential on seagrass. For example, this is posidonia in the Mediterranean Sea and it is crucial for climate regulation and blue carbon. Next slide please. And this is what you see here is Coraline algal habitat and it is also impacted by ocean acidification in the Mediterranean and we can calculate the economic impact of it. And next slide please. What we can see is a lack of consistent OIA policies in the Mediterranean. What we need is more coordination, more collaboration between the countries if we want to have very good impact. Thank you so much. And the next statement is given by myself. So how the global ocean acidification observation network called GOA on hub for the Mediterranean region addresses ocean acidification risks. So the GOA on Mediterranean Ocean acidification hub is a grassroots initiative. It's a voluntary network that connects Mediterranean scientists who are working on and are interested in ocean acidification around the Mediterranean Sea. So this regional hub is supported by 90 members from 14 countries that border the Mediterranean Sea and it has 11 members steering committee with two co-chairs and a secretariat member. So what are the goals and the outputs? So the goals of the GOA on Mediterranean hub is to improve communication to better study and understand ocean acidification and its regional consequences. Importantly through collaboration and joint projects really action and to promote very important consistent community best practices so that everybody uses the same methods and best practices and tools. And it's a positive Mediterranean ocean acidification community also via capacity building and trainings and it provides ocean acidification related policy briefs and also public outreach. The outputs. This hub is existing only for one year and we have already a publication. You would have which you see ocean acidification research in the Mediterranean sea status trends and next steps as a baseline. More joint published review papers are to come. There is an ongoing inter comparison exercise where 12 institutes are represented measuring a suit of carbonate chemistry parameters. Rating joint grant proposals participate in international events and conferences and write multiple annual newsletters and are present in the in social social media. This Mediterranean GOA on hub is one of nine or is it already 10 hubs around the world regional hubs that are active and all of them are grassroots initiative and voluntary. There is no external funding. And the next presentation will be given by Ms. Jesse Turner, please. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for having me here today to speak because the sound okay. Good enough. Okay, so I'll just give a quick overview of the OAA alliance. So we were created to help governments better understand and respond to ocean acidification impacts within their regions, both domestically and then also internationally. We've been talking a lot about the science so far and how we need to fill knowledge gaps, what take an inventory of what we know in different areas and what the impacts might be. But now we need to be moving that conversation into the policy and decision making space. And so that's what I'll just quickly give the overview about. For next slide. I just want to mention that we really need to be doing this by beginning to put away information in context. So we put away information knowledge gaps mitigation and adaptation strategies into perspective that policymakers decision makers, and even other stakeholders that are non governmental can understand that they can engage with. And that they care about, and most importantly that they can do something about. That's a really big element when it comes to thinking about what can we do, what are we asking policymakers to do about this issue. And so we know of course that OAA is a multi sector issue it's a multi discipline issue, which is why it's really hard to bring all the right people together to figure out what's needed to take inventory of in for of what we know about potential impacts. But here's just a quick example you can see that we're talking about OAA in a larger context including climate adaptation goals and financing needs including marine management strategies, including sustainable development goals tourism food security, and other things that I can't see but I'm sure are right there behind me. And so we'll talk a little bit more I think in the panel about food security so I'll save that for sort of our secondary question discussion. But again just really want to help set the scene for putting this in context. So for the next slide. I also just want to mention that it's really difficult to go to a government or a policymaker or even a stakeholder and say, What are you doing to better understand and address ocean acidification in your region or in your country or in your community. So a new question, nobody has the right answers to that question because we're figuring it out together in real time. And so the OAA Alliance we've sort of set up this framework to sort of give some tickets for policy makers decision makers stakeholders to understand what we call like OAA adjacent activities. And so the first you can see here is obviously just reducing co2 the number one cause of ocean acidification. We're currently looking at advancing that local science and research for purpose. So really thinking about moving from IPCC projections into something a little bit more fit for purpose locally. Thirdly, and this is really important I think for this discussion in the Mediterranean is thinking about reducing local stress like wastewater agricultural runoff nutrients nitrates that can go a long way to exacerbating ocean acidification as well as hypoxia near shore coastal acidification as we refer to it. And this is one of the biggest things that we talk about when what can we do to reduce pressure today on ocean acidification. So it's really important that policy makers decision makers understand the link between that that action and ocean acidification stress reduction. Fourthly, adaptation and resilience strategies will talk a little bit more about what those are what those could entail. And then four and five I won't go into detail too much obviously raising public awareness with multiple different communities. We remember the sectors that we saw on the last slide. So how do we communicate away to some of those types of people that are operating within those lenses, and then international momentum building. And so Steve will talk a little bit more about what that work looks like for an OA research agenda internationally, but also thinking about financing and really beating the drum for increased finance for this work at a regional and local scale. And so we've heard a little bit about the impacts and I think we'll talk a little bit more about impacts of ocean acidification in the Mediterranean and Red Sea areas across the Middle East. But what I want to mention here is that we do through the Alliance work with partners, currently even in Egypt, the UAE, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, but also partners like the Union of the Mediterranean, the European Commission, alongside regional seas conventions. So even conventions like the Barcelona convention is also the full title is the convention for the protection of the marine environment and the coastal region of the Mediterranean, as well as the Black Sea convention. And it's really important that we're also engaging and connecting with these types of partners to find a path forward to regionally appropriate and applicable policy strategies that best support localized OA mitigation and adaptation. And so this slide is my final and I promise I'll just highlight a quick project that we've been working on with the European Commission and its member states and I think it has some applicability to the conversation we'll get into. Here in this example, we've been working to help identify which regional seas conventions are actually generating OA information now, which are not. What gaps do we need filling where and why, and then really importantly how does OA information and that includes measuring reporting mitigation and adaptation fit into some of these existing shared management policies that are already in place. The European Commission is a little bit more attainable because it's a shared directive across all EU member states. But to give an example, you know here we're really helping them think about how does OA information support something called the EU marine strategic framework directive, which asks governments to assess and report on the status of their waters and determine if they are in good environmental status. And of course none of this has any consideration around warming acidification oxygen loss. And so really helping them think about that as well as connections to the water quality directive nitrates directive, as well as by a lot of biodiversity targets and goals so really how do biological diversity targets and goals. When we put that in context of food, what impacts habitat compression and food security, what are we missing when we're looking at those types of goals and targets locally. So I'll just pause there and we get into the other questions, but I just want to highlight this is the type of work particularly in the Mediterranean that would be very applicable. Currently, but thinking about what other shared conventions or directives can be exploring in the region as well. Thank you very much, Jesse. So the next statement will be given by Steve Vidicombe on global coordinated actions to address ocean acidification. So ocean acidification research for sustainability called horse. I think I'm, I think I'm tethered to the chair with this thing. I'll sit here. I can see. Okay. There we go. Okay, you got double handed. Okay, right. How could this go wrong? Okay. Global coordinated actions as you heard earlier. I co-chair the global acid of the global acid acidification observing network. I also am a co-lead on the ocean acidification research for sustainability program endorsed through the UN. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a perspective on, on how I see ocean acidification activities, both in terms of a global perspective, but also how that resonates down into what actually happens on the ground. So kind of next slide please. So as we thought ocean acidification a global phenomenon, it's happening in all the oceans are going over the world wherever we go and measure it. We're seeing the ocean acidification is happening. But as a global problem, we recognize in 2012 that actually the best way to then address it was to collectively come together as scientists who are interested in this problem and share our knowledge, share our expertise, work together on group activities. Because time is pressing with this matter is not something we can spend the next 50 years looking at and understanding how to deal with it. It's something that needs to move quickly. And the way in which you move quickly is you move quickly together. So we came together in 2012. There was around 60 or so scientists from a dozen countries form the observing network. And we are hugely thankful for the support given by the IAA who have been funding the the secretariat along with partners from NOAA and IOC UNESCO for all this time. Without that support, those coordination actions really just don't happen. But as you said, other than that coordination, the rest of the activities that go on within GOAA and our voluntary, these are people who are committed to ocean acidification and want to do something about it. So then go back five years and the UN Ocean Decade was launched. And the UN Decade represented a challenge to scientists in the fact that we were then laid down the challenge that we needed to do science and provide science that was transformational and just didn't think about doing science for the sake of science. So as the sort of global coordinating entity of so many scientists. So as you see in 2023 GOAA and is now represented with 900 scientists from over 114 countries. We felt it was our responsibility to create a roadmap for how science could engage with solutions and new policies to be able to make a difference. And we did that by creating this in essence what represents a roadmap to science and the activities we need to create a real change by the end of the ocean decade. And we did something unusual that scientists don't often do because we are so interested in doing science because science is really cool and it's really interesting and we're only really interested in the next piece of science in front of us. But what we did was we actually said, OK, we're going to get somewhere we need to know where we're going. So we laid out what it was we wanted to achieve by the end of the decade. We thought about the ultimate benefits. We thought about the impacts and then we challenged ourselves to go, OK, so what do we really need? And as the ocean decade said, what do we really need for the ocean we want? And we identified these these outcomes. There are seven key outcomes that our actions must deliver by the end of this century if we are going to deal with the ocean acidification problem. We need to generate the quality data that's required so that we can understand the problem. We need to also understand what the priorities are. As I said, there's so much to do, but we need to focus on that science which can be taken into policy and can affect change. So it's not about doing everything everywhere all the time. It's about doing the things that really matter. How can we partner and co-locate ocean acidification work with other environmental science so that we get more value for our money, more value for our investment? We all know how hard it is to get funding to do these kind of activities. How can we get more out of it? Understand the biological impacts because at the end of the day chemical changes in the ocean are all very interesting, but it's really what's affecting the biology and the humans who depend on that biology that really leads us to take action. Future projections. And this isn't about generating ocean models of the entire basin because if we're going to manage this problem, we need to manage the resources at a local level. So we need to create models and future predictions and scenarios that really matter on a scale where people can make decisions. Public awareness. Public awareness is not about turning everyone into an ocean acidification expert, but it is about giving people enough information so that they can have a contribution to the conversation. And when we move on to the next outcome, outcome seven, when it's about putting evidence into policy, we then take the public with us because some of these policy decisions won't be particularly pain-free when it comes to the impacts on people. So people need to understand why they're being made and actually being supportive of the fact that what we're doing is trying to make things better. Next slide, please. So how can we all be part of this effort? So in terms of part of ours, where ours is what's created by Goan, but it isn't Goan. It's intended for the entire community. And whether you are a marine biologist, a chemist, a social scientist, a policymaker, a professional communicator, whatever you're training, you can play a role here. So each of the outcomes, there is a working group and we call people to come and join these working groups as part of our ones. And you can contact us and become part of these working groups. Next slide, please. We can also create projects if you're working on a student certification. And if you want your work to be recognized and be contributing to this international effort, you can get your project endorsed by the UN Ocean Decade and come in under the umbrella of ours. And the types of activities we're looking for in each of these outcomes is laid out in a series of white papers which will be published soon and you can refer to these. But equally, ours as a community is happy to work with you as you develop your projects to ensure that they are fitting in line with the types of things we want to do so that you have good success when you go for endorsement with the UN Decade. Next slide, please. But we understand not everyone wants to go through the formal endorsement phase. So we've just launched a process whereby if you are working on any aspect of ocean acidification, you can register that as a voluntary commitment through ours. So you can show the world what you are doing. So you get recognition for the work you're doing, show how it is contributing to the international effort, but also by doing so you are also playing your part in inspiring others to do the same. Because if they see what you are doing, people will say, I can do that as well. I want to be part of that. And momentum builds and more people become involved. Next slide, please. Okay. So that's not mine. So in essence, what I would like to sum up and saying is that this effort of coordination is not just there for a group of scientists. It's there for everyone. And we really do want to reach out and bring as many people into this conversation as possible and use everyone's skills to deliver those outcomes because you do not deliver change unless you really engage with those people who have the skills to be able to do that. And I think the ocean decade has been key to getting scientists to step out, create new partnerships and really engage in a collaborative way with those people who can really help effect change. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Steve. So as you can see global ocean acidification is a global problem with different regional impacts. We can only tackle it if we have really globally wide activities and bring the community worldwide together. And we, we submitted a satellite event to the ocean decade conference in Barcelona together with with with ours, the ocean acidification and natural coordination center together with ours and go on and we really hope please keep fingers crossed that it will be accepted that we can have a big satellite successful satellite event in Barcelona. Thank you very much Steve. Our next speaker is Lena Hansen. And she will tell us about enhancing research capacities for ocean acidification and multiple stressors, for example, warming which is in effect of global change. Climate change and pollution to underpin targeted sustainable solutions, please. Thank you so much. This was more efficient than yours than yours. And I'm very happy to be here again. Sorry for my slight delay in the beginning of the session. I'm Lena Hansen. I'm with the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. And we are working closely together with the IEA ocean acidification international coordination center with the scientific center of Monaco also represented here and and and with with Jesse and with everyone basically on the on this panel. I also, before joining the foundation, I was working with the OACC. So I have been following these from from the start and it's very nice to be able to be here on the panel. I think it's it's super good after your presentation because you're talking about the skills we need to deliver the future we want and the decade and how do we build those skills. So it's all about capacity building, of course, and the IEA is a huge player in that in that regard and the ocean acidification international coordination center has been one of the main organizations to be delivering capacity building to member states all over the world for the for the last plus eight more than 12 years actually as soon. So what my slides are not really there are just humans on these slides I just want to, you know, show people because there's where the skills ultimately are needed. This is a particular course that we were organizing on multiple stressors last November. So we have it's not specifically focusing on a region and I wanted to before going into this specific course I just wanted to say what we have learned through the capacity building development and the activities of the OACC in the past. So today, you know, they have funded or provided capacity to more than 800 scientists all over the world, and through more than 60 capacity building opportunities and more than 100 countries. So it's really a big, big effort and before the OACC there was nothing really on building on ocean acidification. So this has been ocean acidification community has been very strong in renaming itself and saw very early on the need to to involve everyone and leaving no one behind. So that is has been one of the key features of the OACC since it starts. What we have learned is in the early days we started with very basic basic courses which are very useful even today because what we see is that we need to build capacity in different steps. So in the beginning we had more we started out with more theoretical let's say courses on carbon and chemistry on biology and and some demos in the lab but not really handsome. When we felt that participants had gone through that stage we were able to be able to engage them in the what we call level two which is more like interactive let's say where people are well our participants would really engage in in in lab studies more. Then as as they acquire this capacity what we had what we designed together with with Sam Dupont who is really I want to acknowledge I think he's on the. Let's say second slide maybe we can see him well. No. Well we can see we can see his head to there. You know it's he has very been really been a champion of this particular activity of the OACC with the University of Gothenburg is also a consultant with the with the IEA now and he has been we're developing together this really comprehensive capacity building program. So. Building from that level to training what we did was realizing that we could bring everyone together around a common experiment so that was the third step of training that we are offering let's say. That we actually do longer training courses around two or three weeks here you have some just pictures to illustrate some of those courses. This is the picture in Ville France we try to to bridge field studies with laboratory experiments and really to conceptualize how to do ocean acidification experience. And what is really important is that each time. We try to. Encourage participants to think about what is important in their region so this is very relevant for this session of course when we talk about regional approaches. As Steve mentioned before the goal is not that every scientist in the world measures ocean acidification in every point in the world and do the same thing it's really important to understand. What is what are the the the problem the problems from ocean acidification or you are and that scientists and to build that local capacity to reply to respond to to those concerns food security concerns. And and others so it's really about looking at what kind of data is existing how is the chemistry carbon chemistry evolving in that region what do I need to measure. So we during those training courses we try to build on a number of resources that the OACC has also developed. We have a bibliographic database with all papers published on the way and a new stream as well with all information coming out from ocean acidification and those can be you can search for what you really are looking for in your region. So it's we try to do and have everyone hand doing a bit of a case study using these tools which are really invaluable to the to the community looking at what exists what kind of data exists already in your region and what. So doing a mini mini analysis of what is already there and what do you want to to research which is not there already. So we're trying to do these courses around actually a true experiment so this bringing people together and giving those basic tools to study together and then actually design their training course around a common joint experiments which means that people have actually been able to publish scientific results together after at the very end of the course. So it's really exciting to see this community developing at the IEA the final step maybe is see a coordinated research project that is also existing which is really. Scientists all overcoming together to respond to do a specific scientific topic a real mini mini research program so there are different steps of that learning curve I think we have been very. Glad to see how well it has worked over the years. And also moving as Yana said into multiple stressors because obviously it's not only about away ocean acidification is not happening in isolation we need to look at temperature rise we have. In the Mediterranean for example, there have been many heat waves in in recent years so it's really not about one single stressor. But that is so much more complicated right if you have more than one stressor the the the complexity of the design of the experiment is not the same so we're working also to try to develop best practices on how to do that. All together I think I'll maybe stop here. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Lena for your intervention and with that we are arrived first given applause to our speakers. And now we are starting our panel discussion. So we had a lot of research lot of work going on after this almost 12 years of international global wide research and ocean acidification concerted action. Let's allow me a little provocative question. What did we learn. So what progress has been made after this, not 12 years but ocean acidification study started 20 years ago. So what what progress did we made. So for the decade to come what research should we prioritize. Which, which of you would like to take the question. First yes, please. Well actually well ocean acidification research started around 20 years ago and when it first started it was it was seen as an open ocean chemical problem. And it was really just chemical oceanographers thought this is quite interesting changing in pH carbonate chemistry and what have you. And a lot of effort was gone into really understanding being able to measure at very fine scales and understand very small changes. But what we've realized over the over the last 20 years actually is that where we should really be worrying about ocean acidification is in the coastal zone close to where humans and the marine environment interact. Because whilst the biggest driver of ocean acidification is indeed carbon dioxide but there are all sorts of other processes within the coastal zone that can make it worse. And things like wastewater incursions into into into the coastal zone the way in which we so the way in which we add nutrients. The way in which we but there's also solutions there the way in which we manage habitats that can absorb carbon dioxide. So this is not an open ocean esoteric problem existing thousands of miles away it's happening on people's doorsteps and we understand now the complexity of the way in which organisms respond. When we first started it was a case of well obviously those organisms that use calcium carbonate for their shells and their skeletons they're going to be the ones most at risk. And then we thought because it's just a dynamics between calcium carbonate and acidified water but it's far more nuanced than that we know that animals have got an ability to respond to the ocean acidification. And it becomes in a balance between the physiological choices animals make between do I use energy to build my skeleton or do I use energy to grow bigger or to reproduce which can have huge impacts on agriculture and fisheries. So we understood the more we look into it the more we understand actually it's a very complex problem and it's very very locally and textually based. So not only are the impacts going to be heavily affected by what happens in the local local area that solutions as well many of the solutions are going to be driven by those processes that we can control by local management. So over and above controlling emissions which is the one most important thing we could do control emission. There are other things we can do on our own doorsteps which will give us the ability to at least reduce the impact of ocean acidification that we're going to we're going to feel so it's not a completely hopeless situation. Thank you Steve. Anyone from the panel would like to add. Yes, maybe I can add from the socio economic side. What we need is to understand the science and then make the evaluation of the economic impacts. And this is very important the link between science economics society to understand everything together. And this is why the research should be multidisciplinary when we talk about climate change about ocean acidification between a bill. The multidisciplinary research is really crucial to understand and to find solutions. If we want to take the right decisions, we can we can tell the policymaker that this will impact the ecosystem. This will impact the biodiversity and so forth. But in fact, if they don't understand the cost of action or inaction, they will not take the right decisions. And it is very important for them to understand that if they don't act now, if they don't stop their emissions or carbon emissions now, it will be cost much more costly in the future. And this is what we call the cost of inaction. And for for ocean acidification, we now we we know the impact. Most of the impact we still have research to do locally to understand more. But what we need now is solutions to because policy makers at certain moments, they tell us, OK, we understand. But now what we can do, what can we do? And we have to bring them solutions on the on the table. And for example, it can be technology like alkanity enhancement, but it can be also nature based solutions. And as I said in the Mediterranean, we have the posidonia, the seagrass, and it can capture the carbon sequester in the in the in the ocean. And this is very important. Thank you, Natalie. You addressed already the question I was about to to to ask or started to answer. What about the progress in solution design and implementation? So maybe you could the panel could address this. So what do you think about ocean like alkanity enhancement? I know there was a session yesterday in the in the ocean pavilion. But maybe some of you would like to elaborate a little bit more on the potential impact on ecosystems and organisms. I can I can open. Go ahead, Jesse. All right. Only because I spoke on an ocean alkanity enhancement panel yesterday from an ocean acidification perspective. I would say through the OA Alliance perspective on this particular topic, we talk about marine carbon dioxide removal strategies in general. And I think for as this issue or these sort of topic was getting more focused over the last couple of years, we were really nervous that ocean acidification trends would be pointed to as sort of a carte blanche sort of paltz for increased marine carbon dioxide removal as sort of a go to, you know, lightning. solution. And we certainly don't think that is the right approach to this topic. And that said, we also know that we are going to need some carbon dioxide removal strategies, atmospherically land based, and perhaps from the ocean. And also we know that not all marine carbon dioxide removal strategies are the same. And they will have different impacts on ocean acidification, sometimes decreasing ocean acidification, maybe accelerating acidification, and that's going to look different global and local and regional scales. And so what we spoke about a little bit yesterday is the potential for something like a localized ocean alkalinity enhancements to be something that's less about the sort of larger scale, you know, carbon removal capture storage measure and monetize which is sort of I think the way that that conversation is headed. But also a little bit more about a local adaptation and resilience building opportunity. So if in fact there's areas where we can get that lagoon a little bit more time or that reef a little bit more tolerance during certain seasons of stress, or that selfish growing operation or urchin farm, a little bit more resilience. During periods we know are going to be a little bit more stressful, or during life stages that are going to be a little bit more vulnerable. Then it is worth exploring some of those strategies to think about what that could look like from our perspective. I think the biggest thing is recognizing that in a lot of areas we've talked a lot about the regional knowledge gaps right so we've got global IPCC projections Steve said eloquently that we need to be bringing ocean acidification work to the coastal zone margins. And in a lot of areas there's just no baseline when it comes to even evaluating what the trends of ocean acidification have been what the carbon cycling has been in a certain area. And so that is one consideration when we think about localized strategies for OAE, is it occurring are these pilots occurring in areas that actually have baselines that we can measure against. And if not, are there ways that we can encourage some of those private sector or yeah private sector dollars to support that type of research to support that type of baseline development regionally I guess that's monitoring more than research. So that's sort of the perspective I think around its application potential for localized relief localized resilience, but probably a long way to go to think about exactly what that could look like. And again it's so particular case by case location by location, and that's outside of my wheelhouse quickly as a non scientists to get into but maybe Steve as I as a hardcore scientist would like to add. I completely I completely endorse everything that Jesse said the key thing I focus in on is that we talk a lot about marine or ocean carbon dioxide removal as if it's one big is one single thing but it isn't it ranges from conversations being had around the restoration or the protection of natural habitats that are drawing down carbon dioxide which we know a huge amount about that. And actually would appear to be a relatively good thing to do to protect those habitats, all the way through. Such as the alkalinity enhancement techniques which is around manipulating the chemistry of the ocean, but with the intention not to be then changing the biology all the way through to. post techniques which purposely manipulate biological systems on vast scales to be able to drive drive carbon dioxide removal. Each of those things come with a set of risks and a set of benefits that still have to be explored a lot more before we start making decisions. It's imperative that decisions we make in this space are evidence led and we don't act out of some kind we don't act out of out of hope rather than out of knowledge. So we mustn't let our hearts rule our heads that we just want to do something and this seems like something we can do so let's do it let's make sure that we're doing something that's going to benefit us in the oceans and we're not we're not in essence creating something creating a bigger problem than the one we're trying to fix in essence. When we start licensing activities like this in the open ocean with kind of writing a patient consent form for the ocean. If you think about a pharmaceutical intervention or a medical intervention, if I was to come to you and say I've got a new drug that I would like you to take your first question to me is it safe. Is it going to make me better or is it going to make me worse than I currently am now currently for many of these things we don't know. So why would we write sign off that patient consent form for the ocean until we understand what those side effects are I think that would be negligent on our part, which is why it was fantastic yesterday there was a launch of the best practice guide on how we do the research for ocean acidification and I'm sure Lena will talk about ocean acidity enhancement experiments and I'm sure Lena will talk to you a bit more about that because because what we've learned is we need to act quickly, but we need to empower the scientific community to be able to give the evidence that's needed we there's no time to waste. So resources like that are going to be fundamental in ensuring that we're not scratching around for knowledge and we can make better decisions and we don't find ourselves in a much worse position than we currently are so I don't know whether you want to say. Yesterday, yes, we launched this guide to best practices and ocean alkalinity and purge, and you said get acidification that's because this was modeled on something we did 10 years ago, which was the guest. It was really an inspiration. That was a document that was kind of analytical for the ocean acidification science community, because it really meant it really brought you know the number of people doing research. It kind of lowered the entry level I'd say to start ocean acidification studies it was really important to be able to build this ocean acidification community that we talked about earlier and right now maybe there are 100 scientists only looking into ocean alkalinity enhancement and it's not enough because the scientists are already looking much more into this than academia, and it needs to be more balanced so this. This guide was was made in the hopes that it would have a similar catalytic effect let's say on on this field of research and that really it's advocating for sharing data. From from private companies who are doing I'm really probably a very good research but it's not always transparent it's not always shared. So, so that is this guide it has 13 chapters it's looking into the chemistry how to do how to get the chemistry right if you want to do ocean alkalinity enhancement how to. Do data management and sharing super important as we said and what are the impact as you were saying super important what are the impacts on marine life and biodiversity. So yeah it's happy to share the resource with anyone interested maybe I don't know if we're going to continue on this subject or you want to change. I would like to take the subject a step further and to give it a more regional focus so since we are in a side event on the on the Gulf on on on Mediterranean also Persian Gulf. So, what do you think could regional networks play in further understanding ocean acidification solutions or I can actually enhancement solutions for particular regions regions as we understand. It's only feasible as a small scale at all as a small scale regional or local solution so what could regional networks do to facilitate or to help to better understand what's your opinion. Thank you very much. I think about the regional network I think one of the issue which is Steve mentioned and probably what we like to highlight is. Measurement is not enough and I personally since we are resource not it's a resource intensive exercise to generate high quality pH data which I have always disagreed that I don't have resources to do this. I spectrophotometric pH measurement doesn't add much to my understanding. So what we sincerely believe is that we should start investing time and energy to understand that how these organisms are actually what is the biological aspect associated with it instead of the only chemistry because at the end we are going to look at the ecosystem functioning. The resilience and this is very very nice to do and invest in this because the experimental data so far that has been generated. I will say it has been generated in haste. There are experimental studies we just take the CO2 levels from 400 ppm to 900 and 1600 and we very easily conclude that they won't survive they won't make it. We have done quite a lot of work and I can we have had some discussion with Steve that probably Gulf is a good experimental site in that terms because it's a very hot water. We are super saline. We do see a lot of a much accelerated drop in pH in spite of all the buffering capacity we have. But we still see ecosystem resilience and work which we have been doing experimental work to support this we see that this is like inbuilt. So are we really putting underpinning it with the right science these policies or really we need to be very cautious when we say that because what we can all agree that yes extreme events are increasing but are they really going to have this devastating effect. I think I have serious concerns about it unless we underpin it with some solid science and that solid science is still lacking. So that's my take on it. On what you said around the importance of sort of regional hubs I mean from the ocean acidification viewpoint I mean what we what we've really benefited from by by creating the regional hubs and having the regional hubs created not from a global perspective but actually from a ground up. The scientists in the region creating a network that was I them and for them to discuss the issues that were most relevant to the situations they were looking at to be able to share knowledge so some of the regional hubs in go and have a much stronger focus on capacity building some on particular habitats some on technology development and it's very much about what is of interest in that region and I think that's that's the value there's huge value in coming together at a global scale. But let's not know let's not understand the shared experiences of people who live in the same kind of geographical where dealing with the same governance and management issues dealing with similar environments similar ecosystems. And that kind of that kind of shared experience is so important and also in terms of sort of being able to accelerate the knowledge exchange as well, you know particularly in very resource limited situations. It's important that we get every last piece of value out of the knowledge we have so. Can I add on. Then just see please. I just want to add that maybe these are shared experiments, but also the difference, because for the Mediterranean, for example, we have on the north developed countries that are part of Europe so they have more finance they have more capacities to adapt. And in the south, it is different because those countries are more impacted by climate they are more vulnerable, but also they receive less finance financing possibilities and they cannot manage it. So this is also good when we have networks because maybe the developing countries can explain to the North what is going on in their country what are their difficulties and for the science what we need is maybe more monitoring and data that we as economists can use in the future. Because the problem is most of the scientific experiments are done in laboratories for very short term periods and for for economy we need a longer period we need more data to make the modeling and to forecast what is happening in the future. Jesse would you like to add. Okay. Thank you very much so let's take it a little step more concrete a little step further. So what would be the steps that would be needed to mitigate ocean acidification impacts on food security in the Red Sea, Gulf and Mediterranean. Jesse would you like to take that. Indeed. So yeah, I mean I think the questions are what steps are needed to read to mitigate a way impacts on food security in the region. And the answer is many and of course I'll be speaking from the policy sort of management side but before that I just really want to hone in again on what we've been talking about the biological impacts. Studies and because that's really where the nexus of the food security conversation starts to come in and just simply put. Worldwide there is not enough biological research in most places to even determine potential impacts of away on keystone species and food webs, and therefore food security and that really does need to change. And the IAEA has done a phenomenal job actually putting research agendas out into the world focused on keystone fisheries. And I know that the report maybe is just out looking at 17 different, different seafood species, and, and we need to see more of that out into the universe. What I'll say generally is that I think from a few food food security perspective as well. We really need to be moving beyond shellfish right so we've talked about always sort of becoming like an oyster issue or a muscle issue. We really need to be talking about this as a food web issue as a habitat availability issue, and as a thin fish and fisheries issue, and it doesn't just have to be about shells and skeletons right so it really is thinking about. Life stages growth rates habitat compression, especially in the context of multiple stressors as we talked about with warming and hypoxia which I think is as important if not more important to the region that we're talking about by way of impacts. And so, you know, so again kind of looking at some of the localized species bluefin sea bass urchins Coraline algae was mentioned in different species studies around that. I think from the policy side and bringing more of that focus into the food security work. We do really want to be talking about changing ocean conditions, you know climate related changing ocean conditions warming hypoxia ocean acidification is going to have an impact on different sectors. It's not just fisheries, but it's also aquaculture tourism coastal management sustainable development goals, and that all sort of has contact to economies at scale and food security economies. And as far as you know what we need this integration to look like, we need a lot more integration between government sectors and public communities about what's required to make a meaningful mitigation and adaptation agenda for coastal waters in one region. And that really is going to look a lot like marine conservation, that's going to look a lot like decreasing local stress, and that's going to look a lot like building resilience we've talked a little bit about the blue carbon or nature based solutions sort of approaches. And I think that's sort of what the agenda looks like if you will. I just want to add a couple things. The UN after there's awareness growing generally about ocean acidification I think how has that translated to real action that's a different question and the mitigation and adaptation space. And I think the biggest question is because most policymakers just don't know what to do. We were having a conversation the other day with the Minister of Foreign Affairs in a country that I won't name. And she said yeah you know we're preparing for the UN Ocean Conference we're going down the targets of SDG 14, which includes 14 three which is the ocean acidification goal. She said we get to that goal and we just skip it, because we don't know what to do and then we keep going. And I thought man, everyone does of course you know like that is not unique to that location. And it's really on us to help policymakers understand what they can be doing and why it's so relevant to these topics like food security. So I think that's the, you need to be able to set that table before you can get into the mitigation and adaptation strategies. And so particularly like what do we need, we need a lot more funding at different scales. Some of that can look like international funding from groups like GCF or Jeff or development banks and making the case that ocean acidification work, all of which we've heard about different flavors of that today is part of a climate adaptation agenda and is part of a food security agenda. And that is a really important case to be making. The second is again the focus regional research that we talked about groups like ours FAO calling them a little bit more into the work to think about seafood species research that they could be doing in this context, as well as the regional conventions and and just be on a networks regionally to be creating an entire seafood vulnerability research agenda it's not possible it's not time sensitive, and we have other bodies that we need to be calling on for that type of work. And then we really need policy and management integration in a real way. And so I think what that looks like a little bit is real more relying on cumulative impact assessments. So thinking about local CIA is that include hypoxia and ocean acidification that helps make the case for reducing local stress a little bit more strongly. I think we talked about conservation, like marine, in PAs, but also marine spatial planning. So what do we know about different locations coastally, where there's going to be hotspots that are more acidic or more under more stress during certain time. Do we know that there's growing operations or transient species that are going to be in certain areas, and that we can manage around them, it better, you know, and really using MSP in a more strategic way when it comes to thinking about reducing stress on seafood species. And then thirdly we talked more about just incorporating OA across more traditional climate risk assessments, blue economy plans, blue seafood security plans, how many countries have that how many countries have a high level panel on ocean, or on oceans sustainability with a strong emphasis on seafood economies, and OA is absent all of those plans. So those are the type of policy linkages that we need to be making. And then as far as the really localized strategies, I mean, we've talked about the blue carbon nature based solutions reducing stress, breeding for tolerance, some of the manipulation biologically that you can do. But I'll leave it maybe to these guys to talk about that in a different context. Thank you very much, Jesse. Anyone from the panel would like to add. Yes. Yes, maybe, maybe we shouldn't consider ocean acidification separately from other stressors. It's all the stressors together affecting our lives affecting our well being. And I think they should be considered together and same for the food security is one of the STGs, but all the 17 FDGs are related. So we also have to consider them together if we want to advance. And so I think it is important to to consider all the aspects as globally. And even if we consider only the Mediterranean or the Gulf countries, we can also look what is going on on research globally and try to implement the solutions. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but some of them can be useful and we have not thought about them in the region. So I think this is something we can do and funding maybe I can add something because I agree with Steve. Funding for research is lacking and we need more research. And Jesse said also we need more funding for the solutions. But now we know what is missing is a private sector funding because we have multilateral funding. We have public funding and we want to attract the private sector funding. And one possibility is the blue carbon and what I said the carbon markets, but we should be careful about the marine CDR. And not to do something which is not resilient, which is not sustainable for the future, because it is something we don't know. The side effects are not well known yet. And I think my science scientific colleagues already said that we need more research. So we need probably more funding for that. So it should be attracted in the right way. Thank you. I fully agree. In terms of funding, we should also start to explore the private sector possibilities of funding for our research. Well, it not always leaves us the freedom of what we are doing, but we should carefully look into it and explore that part. Now I would want to open the floor for questions to the audience, but I see that the audience is rather thin. But nevertheless, are there any questions from the audience to the panel? Yes, please. Hi, my name is Calvin from Australia, so different part of the world. That's my question bit left field. Why do you think the ocean isn't spoken about more in conferences like this or prioritized in regards to how important the role that it plays in climate. Nice start. Okay start. It's a wonderful question and I think I'll take the non cynical answer and then if anyone else wants to take the cynical answer they may. The non cynical answer I think is just true awareness. You know, we've been part of a groups, I think present company, working to elevate the role of oceans in the at least the UNFCCC international climate agenda since about well before Paris but really picking up around the There have been many partners like Plymouth like Prince of Monaco Foundation, IAEA that for years as early as the early 2000s were weaving the ocean flag in the UNFCCC space. I'm from my perspective, because that's when I arrived, everything picked up and I'll get you, but I perceived when I began working on this topic here was around Paris climate agreement time there was a more of a massing of civil society groups really focused on the ocean agenda, if you will, and trying to reach out to governments to better build an ocean caucus here at the UNFCCC parties getting together having particular demands around how we are better reflecting ocean mitigation adaptation impacts at the UNFCCC. And that has now developed into something called the UNFCCC ocean and climate dialogue. They have on their third annual meeting they meet at the substa which is the subsidiary technical body on science advice to the UNFCCC. And I think it's finding its way there is still I think misunderstanding to some extent around the role of the UNFCCC and some of the ocean work. So, of course, from my perspective, I think present company here we're thinking about the impacts of greenhouse gas and carbon emissions right which is the number one charge of the UNFCCC is to reduce impacts caused by those things. An ocean acidification is squarely within that basket. And so that's really what we're trying to make the case here is that the UNFCCC has even existing responsibilities to the mitigation agenda to the adaptation agenda and to the financing around ocean acidification. Just to give you a quick example this year's ocean dialogue picked two themes. They focused on food security and something else blue carbon. And so the blue carbon agenda is more or less straightforward it's not easy but we know what we're trying to get done with blue carbon we're trying to map it we're trying to measure it, and we're trying to account for it in our indices or monetarily or, you know, kind of in our reduction goals potential from the blue food side or food security side. The big conversation was still around. You know, yeah, we just need to reduce emissions from the ship from the fishing sector and that's one way that we can address food security. And while that's one approach it certainly misses the entire adaptation conversation that we've been having. And so they think there's still a long way to go to bridge that understanding around really the scope and scale of what we're talking about when it comes to warming acidification oxygen loss and impacts on these species and ecosystems. I'll very passionate about this topic so I'll say one more thing. I think, again the optimism is that it's not that people don't care it's really that people don't understand. They think of ocean acidification as an open ocean observing issue. It's not in their ease that it's nothing that they have any personal control over. There's no way that they can think about tackling it. And I think it's not pessimism. It's really just a barrier of communication and we together as a field of practitioners are continuing to refine the messages and the calls to action of what can we be doing about this now. And I think as that continues to resolve itself we will see more momentum and interest picking up at international regional and local scales. But that's the optimistic perspective and a hold. I'd like to give a comment on that. Yeah, if you think it's bad now, you should have come here 15 years ago. It was awful, as Jesse said, the ocean was nowhere near the agenda. But I do think it's moved forward and I would also like to highlight the role played by some of the small island states in moving it forward because inherently that you know their cultural ties to the ocean are so much stronger they they in essence they get it immediately because it is part of their life their culture and everything. I come from a city in the southwest of the UK, Plymouth, which is a coastal city and was called as the city that turned its back on the sea. We have children who live two or three kilometers away from the sea. We've never been to a beach because it's not what people like us do. This is what other social classes do. And I think there are some countries where we're dealing with large barriers to people's sort of engagement perception of the sea is something else. So we don't engage with that, which is why the small island nations have always been at the forefront of getting the oceans on the agenda at places like the UNFCCC and at CBD and places like that. I would also slightly warn against the narrative that has started to spread around the ocean is our solution to climate change. Because yes, there are there are activities that are going to take place in the ocean, which are going to be incredibly beneficial for us, but that they've been going on for multiple years without us knowing the ocean has as tempered the worst extremes of our activities without us even acknowledging that and without us even appreciating the damage we've done. We seem to still be in this relationship with the ocean like it's some kind of rich spouse that we're going to tap up from for whatever we can get from it all the time. When really the communities that are really championing for good ocean action of those that see the ocean more as a parent, a parent that cherishes us and looks after us and we in response have to cherish that parent back. So I, whilst I agree that the ocean is full of potential in how we're going to manage big environmental problems. Let's not keep exploiting that resource, but let's be mindful that we need to, we need to love the ocean in the same way the ocean has loved us for for thousands of years. That's a great statement. Natalie, would you like to add? I will second Steve and Jesse because really the ocean has been seen as a resource provide providers. If we consider the blue economy, we see it as fisheries, maritime transportation, or tourism, coastal tourism, marine tourism, etc. And even the minerals and the oil and gas which is in the ocean. But what we need now is to have a paradigm shift and to change our view on the ocean and on the nature in general. We need a regenerative, nature positive economy and this is something that we have to have in mind if we want to continue because the ocean is not only something to give us the resources, but also it's a part of the solution for climate change and for mitigation and adaptation. Thank you very much. This was three great statements and I hope your question is answered. Is there any other questions from the audience? Thank you. I really think you're very interesting discussion and I'm just thinking about what can we do more together and thinking of at the beginning of this week we worked with Kuwait on a boat vessel, research vessel, which is, I don't know if you have visited, but it's right here in Dubai. And thinking about what you have said about baseline data, that's many places we don't know what's going on and how we can contribute to this with Kuwait, particularly in the region here, where the salinization is very high. And that might give us another perspective where the salt is going back to the sea, so what would be the impact when we are talking about acidification, you see what I mean? So I think that's something that we will maybe contribute in the future and we hope that we have everybody there working together. Thank you Nadat. This is almost like a summary statement of this nice session. I would like to thank all of the speakers on the panel. I would also like to thank the audience and before I close the session, I would also not forget to mention that the funding for the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Center to a large extent is extra budgetary and we're really grateful to the United States for funding. Since 2012. Thank you very much and thank you very much for this great session this afternoon.