PORTHCAWL, UNITED KINGDOM - FEBRUARY 01:  Waves crash up against the sea defences at Porthcawl at first light on February 1, 2014 in Porthcawl, Wales. With high tides, combined with gale force winds and further heavy rain, some parts of the UK are bracing themselves for more flooding.  (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Waves crash up against the sea defenses at Porthcawl at first light on February 1, 2014 in Porthcawl, Wales. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

The world’s oceans cover about 71 percent of the earth’s surface and their value is incalculable for both the planet and mankind. They are a vital, complex and all-encompassing natural resource ranging from a vital food resource in many parts of the world, renewable energy resource, and potential water supply reservoir. Additionally, many still unexplored zones along the seabed could contain exploitable reserves of minerals, oil and natural gas nedded to keep up with mankind’s steadily increasing demand. Most importantly, the global oceans are the lifelines of the global economy with about 70 percent of global trade being seaborne. Prima facie, oceans also help to shield us from the worst impacts of climate change.

A new WWF International report – produced in association with The Global Change Institute and Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg as well as The Boston Consulting Group – attempts to put a value on the world’s oceans and estimates their raw economic “asset” value to be at least US$24 trillion. “Putting it into an international context, if the ocean were a country it would have the seventh largest economy in the world,” the report states.

Nevertheless, this is still a conservative estimate given that only “direct outputs (fishing, aquaculture), services enabled (tourism, education), trade and transportation (coastal and oceanic shipping) and adjacent benefits (carbon sequestration, biotechnology)” are accounted for in this calculation. Given that “many key ecosystem services are difficult to quantify” not included in this asset valuation are “outputs that are not generated by the ocean per se, such as those from offshore oil and gas or wind energy, [or] (…) valuable intangibles such as the ocean’s role in climate regulation, the production of oxygen, [and] temperature stabilization of our planet.”

Global Ocean Asset Value

roman ocean1Source: WWF International

Therefore, the report asserts that “the actual value of the ocean is much higher.” Whether the proper value is US$24 trillion or higher is irrelevant per se – think of it’s value along the lines of ‘goodwill’ in accounting – and is primarily meant to make clear to the public what is here at stake because the report shows that “more than two-thirds of the annual base economic value of the ocean is produced by assets that rely directly on healthy ocean conditions.” These conditions, however, are deteriorating steadily as “the ocean economy is already faltering and not delivering anything like its full potential,” the report indicates. The ocean is increasingly becoming the ultimate dumping ground for modern civilization’s wastes. Read the entire WWF report, which makes the economic case for ocean conservation detailing a plethora of threats to our oceans and proposes eight actions to restore and secure the “shared wealth fund” of the ocean, here.

Notably, the US EPA underscores the crucial role of the world’s oceans with respect to climate change:

“[T]he world’s oceans have a two-way relationship with weather and climate. The oceans influence the weather on local to global scales, while changes in climate can fundamentally alter many properties of the oceans. (…) As greenhouse gases trap more energy from the sun, the oceans are absorbing more heat, resulting in an increase in sea surface temperatures and rising sea level. Changes in ocean temperatures and currents brought about by climate change will lead to alterations in climate patterns around the world. (…) Although the oceans help reduce climate change by storing large amounts of carbon dioxide, increasing levels of dissolved carbon are changing the chemistry of seawater and making it more acidic. Increased ocean acidity makes it more difficult for certain organisms, such as corals and shellfish, to build their skeletons and shells. These effects, in turn, could substantially alter the biodiversity and productivity of ocean ecosystems.”

In sum, the world’s oceans play a critical role in the global carbon cycle but – due to feedback loops – this also has implications for climate change. Note, heat naturally tends to rise, which is why the immense reservoir of deeper and much colder ocean waters – vis-à-vis the surface water zone – does not absorb “all” of the planet’s global warming. So, while the oceans are seemingly “useful” for neutralizing global (surface) warming to a certain degree there is no reason to celebrate. The adverse impacts of warming oceans for different ecosystems are myriad and hidden away from the public in the oceans’ depths – meaning that positive feedbacks from the oceans may actually exacerbate the impacts of climate change. Related to that, Matthew England, Deputy Director of the Australian University of New South Wales (UNSW) Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) explains in a recent article why using global average surface air temperatures as a measure of total warming can be deceiving because it ignores the fact that most of the heat – about 93 percent – is absorbed by the world’s oceans.

roman ocean2Source: Matthew England via TheConversation.com

The oceans “continue to warm without any sign of a pause”, he warns and instructively elaborates on that further: “Global average surface air temperatures only reflect the heat present in the atmospheric layer immediately above the land/ocean surface. As heat gets sloshed around the oceans by processes such as El Niño, the overlying atmosphere responds by tracking these heat variations. As a result, surface temperature is strongly affected by natural variability. Beyond year-to-year variability such as El Niño there are decade-to-decade changes, such as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, which has been shown to have a marked impact on global temperature rise.”