Look, the "China Plan" to use the ocean to control carbon emissions

The 2024 World Forum on Science, Technology and Development was recently held in Beijing City. At the sub-forum on interdisciplinary and integrated development to provide solutions for achieving sustainable development, the Global Ocean Negative Carbon Emissions (Global-ONCE) International Science Initiative led by China scientists announced the establishment of the China-US-Europe Ocean Negative Emissions Demonstration Base and the Asian Sub-Center.

Regarding the issue of sustainable development of the ocean, Peter Thomson, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Oceans, said that making good use of the ocean and controlling human carbon emissions is a topic worthy of joint discussion by marine scientists.

According to reports, the International Science Plan for Negative Marine Emissions was led by Jiao Nianzhi, an academician of the China Academy of Sciences. It will launch a marine plan for global carbon neutrality and establish a new paradigm of ecological engineering for negative marine emissions. Global-ONCE has been approved by the United Nations as the "UN Ocean Decade" international science initiative. At present, 33 countries and 78 teams have joined the International Science Program for Negative Marine Emissions.

The oceans already store 93% of the planet's carbon dioxide. In order to meet the global challenge of climate change, Jiao Nianzhi and his team proposed the concept of "miniature biological carbon pump"(MCP). MCP means that marine microorganisms convert organic carbon from activated organic carbon to inert dissolved organic carbon, thereby achieving long-term sequestration of carbon. MCP is the invisible driving force of the huge carbon pool.

With the joint efforts of Jiao Nianzhi and his international counterparts, the content of "marine carbon sinks" was included in the 2017 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Climate Assessment Report for the first time, providing a new basis for relevant United Nations departments and governments to make scientific and technological strategic decisions. basis.