Blue Green Future (BGF) is proud to be part of team that just released the important article titled “Global distribution, quantification and valuation of the biological carbon pump,” published in Nature Climate Change on March 27, 2025, https://rdcu.be/efknr. The paper focuses on the role of the biological carbon pump (BCP), a crucial oceanic process that sequesters significant amounts of carbon, highlighting its importance for conservation, climate finance, and related policy considerations.
The BCP plays a vital role in the global carbon cycle by transferring carbon from the ocean’s surface to its depths, effectively reducing atmospheric CO₂ levels.
The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the BCP’s global distribution, quantifies the amount of carbon it sequesters, and discusses its economic valuation.
The article also estimates the economic value of the BCP at approximately $500 billion to $1.5 trillion USD in present value terms, depending on carbon market pricing and discount rates used.
Understanding these aspects is essential for informing conservation strategies and integrating the BCP’s value into climate finance mechanisms.
By emphasizing the significance of the BCP, the article underscores the need to incorporate oceanic carbon sequestration processes into broader climate policies and financial frameworks aimed at mitigating climate change.
Moreover, activities such as deep sea mining, commercial fishing, and bottom-trawling interfere with the BCP and thus reduce the ability of the ocean to help regulate climate.
The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all nations to combat climate change and to adapt to its effects. Countries promise to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through their Nationally Determined Contributions. Pledges to reduce emissions, however, have implications for economic growth. We estimate the link between economic growth and CO2 pollution levels and find that this relationship is highly non-linear. A country's GHG emissions rise rapidly as its economic activity rises, relative to global activity, meaning that fast-growing countries contribute most heavily to current GHG emissions. Then, using real per-capita GDP as our metric, we estimate how much the carbon price should be in order to remove the economic growth benefit from excess GHG emissions. We find that the implied prices are far higher than the prices on any existing market for emissions as well as estimates of the social cost of carbon. Our findings also have important implications for the global dialogue regarding responsibility for climate mitigation as well as for the choice of policies to support mitigation efforts.
Carlos Duarte presentation at Blue Economy Summit — An event connecting international leaders from the worlds of science, institutions, entrepreneurship, and finance to discuss the current status of the ocean and the urgent need to build a sustainable Blue Economy that keeps the ocean and its resources safe for the future generations, by introducing innovative solutions and new economic opportunities.
Panel Session on Natural Capital and Blue Carbon , moderated by Rafael Sarda
Ralph Chami, Former Assistant Director, IMF, Co-Founder Blue Green Future, Williams College Visiting Professor
Carlos Duarte, Professor of Marine Science, KAUST University
Thorsten Thiel , Founder, Global Ocean Trust
CEO Ralph Chami presentation at Blue Economy Summit — An event connecting international leaders from the worlds of science, institutions, entrepreneurship, and finance to discuss the current status of the ocean and the urgent need to build a sustainable Blue Economy that keeps the ocean and its resources safe for the future generations, by introducing innovative solutions and new economic opportunities.
Panel Session on Natural Capital and Blue Carbon , moderated by Rafael Sarda
Ralph Chami, Former Assistant Director, IMF, Co-Founder Blue Green Future, Williams College Visiting Professor
Carlos Duarte, Professor of Marine Science, KAUST University
Thorsten Thiel , Founder, Global Ocean Trust
The greatest economic and social value of our ocean lies not in the short-sighted goal of dividing up the rights to extract its resources, but in protecting the ocean’s biodiversity, physical structures and biogeochemical functioning—the ocean’s integrity and rights as a living system. These aspects are vital to mitigating climate change, reversing our current biodiversity crisis and delivering the conditions for a sustainable blue economy and a life of well-being globally. Protecting the ocean cannot be solely a precautionary step taken through environmental impact assessments prior to extractive permissions. Instead, it should arise through a wholesale reorientation in which the protection of the ocean’s integrity and health is understood as a sacred global trust of co-inherited wealth, our global blue natural capital.
