Our Solutions: Climate change
© WWF-Canon / Cat HOLLOWAY
Tackling global warming and mitigating its effects
WWF's Global Marine Programme is pushing for agreements and policies that protect sensitive marine habitats and species from inevitable effects of climate change.
What's the problem?
The marine environment is already being impacted by climate change.
Climate change is caused predominantly by burning of fossil fuels for energy. This has so far increased the amount of climate changing gas in the atmosphere by a third. WWF's Climate Change Programme is therefore pushing for massive cuts to CO2 emissions. These efforts should have a positive effect on marine ecosystems in the longer term if current global warming trends can be reversed.
In the meantime, strategies are needed to protect sensitive marine habitats and species from inevitable climate change impacts.
Find out more...
WWF is working to ensure that the rise of average global temperatures remains less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. However, even the current increase of 0.7°C since pre-industrial times is already impacting marine ecosystems.
Given the scale of the inevitable effects of global warming on marine life, WWF's Global Marine Programme is pushing for governments and other fora to adopt agreements, policies, or mechanisms that protect sensitive marine habitats and species from climate change.
In order to help park managers assess and help mitigate the effects of climate change on protected areas, WWF also co-published a user’s manual, Buying Time: A User's Manual for Building Resistance and Resilience to Climate Change in Natural Systems.
The first of its kind, the manual gives detailed information on how to increase the resistance (ability to withstand change) and resilience (ability to recover from change) of various habitats to global warming impacts.
The idea is that these strategies will help buy time for habitats and species while the world works out the only long-term solution to climate change - reducing CO2 emissions.
Mitigation options for Marine Protected Areas
Buying Time: A User's Manual for Building Resistance and Resilience to Climate Change in Natural Systems presents various options for marine ecosystems. For example:
- Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) should be part of representative networks covering several examples of all habitats in the ecosystem, to maximize resistance and resilience to climate change.
- Human pressures such as pollution, increased sedimentation, and uncontrolled tourism should be minimized or eliminated in MPAs to reduce the overall stress placed on marine ecosystems suffering from climate change.
- MPAs should attempt to provide robust corridors or flexible boundaries so that species can migrate polewards to cooler waters.
- MPAs should include "cold spots" - natural areas that are cooler due to upwellings, shade, sub-habitats like crooks and cracks, timing of tides, etc - which may reduce thermal stress from climate change.
- MPAs should be created to protect areas that, due to strong currents, upwellings, or other oceanographic features, are less prone to temperature changes.
