Research Projects
Valuing the Ocean
The oceans provide many goods and ecosystem services that are essential for humanity, including food, medicinal products, carbon storage, and roughly half the oxygen we breathe. Oceans also support many economic activities including tourism and recreation, commercial and subsistence fisheries, aquaculture, transportation, and mineral resource extractions. They contribute to local livelihoods as well as national economies.
Global oceans are also integral to the earth’s climate story, particularly since oceanic heat storage and ocean currents directly influence global climatic conditions. But we now realize that the oceans are subject to a number of threats: increasing temperatures driven by human-induced climate change; ocean acidification, large regions that have become anoxic; and pollution of various kinds. Coastal areas are also threatened by sea level rise.
Despite the enormous importance of oceans in regulating climate and their sensitivity to the impacts of climate change, oceans have received scant attention in climate change policy. Similarly, little attention has been given to ecosystem-based management of the global oceans and the economic value of the services the ocean provides to us.
To raise awareness of the plight of the world’s oceans and their importance to our existence, The Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) and The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) have initiated a research project that will assess the economic implications of climate change on the oceans. The report will take a holistic view of the current and future threats to oceans and ocean ecosystems. More specifically, the report will 1) summarize the current state of the science in a number of marine-related areas; 2) examine the threats to the oceans both individually and collectively; 3) provide gross estimates of the economic and societal impacts of these threats; and 4) deliver high level recommendations for what is still needed to stimulate the development of policies that would help us move toward sustainable use of marine resources and services.
Led by Dr. Kevin Noone, the research team includes many of the world’s leading scientists in a number of areas (e.g., fisheries and marine ecosystems, ocean chemistry, marine biogeochemical cycling, oceans and climate change, economics) and other stakeholders from management agencies and policy. More information about the study can be found at Stockholm Environment Institute's website, at our "Ocean and Climate" site under "Valuing the Ocean" or in SEI's press release. You may also download all published papers here:
Preview Summaries of selected chapters:
The impacts of multiple stressors
Economic perspectives
The Pacific Ocean: a case for coordinated action
Kevin Noone has joint appointments at the Department of Applied Environmental Science and the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, and is Director of the Swedish Secretariat for Environmental Earth System Sciences at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.