Philippa Kaur

Europe’s fisheries are catching yellowfin tuna at unsustainable levels, scientists say.Credit: Marty Melville/AFP/Getty

It is a heart-breaking litany. As the world warms, its oceans are acidifying — they have become 30% more acidic during the industrial era. The area covered by low-oxygen marine ‘dead zones’, which are almost devoid of life, has more than quadrupled1 since 1960. By 2025, the amount of plastic in the seas is expected to total 150 million tonnes2. Even now, only 3% of the ocean is strongly protected by marine reserves.None of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is on track to be achieved by 2030, as Nature has been reporting in this series of editorials. But progress on a few, including the 14th goal — to conserve and sustainably use the oceans — has actually been going backwards since the 2015 UN summit at which the SDGs were agreed.SDG 14 comprises ten targets and pledges intended to address acidification, pollution, overfishing, biodiversity loss and other ocean ills. Three are on track, and two others are progressing, albeit too slowly to be achieved by the deadline. The remaining five have either stagnated or regressed. This failure is not for want of talking or pledging. In 2020, under the auspices of a High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (the Ocean Panel), co-chaired by Norway and Palau, 14 coastal states committed to 100% sustainable management of their waters by 2025. By the end of 2022, 17 countries, accounting for more than 40% of the world’s coastal zones, were covered by this pact.
UN high seas treaty is a landmark – but science needs to fill the gap
In February 2022, meanwhile, France hosted representatives of more than 100 countries at a historic ocean summit in Brest. A number of attendees vowed to join a plan to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, to adopt new laws to safeguard marine life in waters beyond national ownership, and to end illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, a term that covers a gamut of unsustainable practices that cost the global economy up to US$50 billion a year.It’s not a lack of knowledge that’s stopping words being translated into actions. In 2018, the Ocean Panel commissioned a two-year review of available intelligence on ocean threats and opportunities, from some 250 experts around the world, closing many existing gaps. That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement — there’s a need for better regional data on fish biomass, for instance, which could help efforts to determine where and how to protect stocks.But the one gap science alone cannot fill is a lack of leadership, something that is most evident in the disturbing misalignment of promises and action from self-proclaimed ocean champions. In June, Norway announced new permits for offshore oil and gas drilling worth $18.5 billion, and proposed opening some 280,000 square kilometres of its waters to deep-sea mining, a nascent industry that risks wreaking havoc on poorly understood ocean ecosystems. Similarly, France, also the host nation for an upcoming UN Ocean Conference in 2025, is opposing a measure to exclude a destructive fishing practice called bottom trawling from marine protected areas in the European Union.The EU itself seems to be operating two sets of policies. Successes it has chosen to highlight include a 37% decrease in fishing pressure — a measure of the extent to which a stock is being exploited — and a 22% increase in fish biomass in its waters between 2005 and 2020. This contrasts sharply with its actions elsewhere; it has been fighting conservation measures in the Indian Ocean that would curb chronic overfishing of yellowfin tuna. French and Spanish ships harvest up to one-third of tuna in these waters with the aid of fish-aggregating devices — large floating structures made of wood or plastic that attract fish, including juveniles, and are associated with unsustainable fisheries.
Protecting the ocean requires better progress metrics
Other big maritime nations — China, India, Brazil and Russia — are facing major challenges in achieving SDG 14. But none has held itself up as an ocean leader. Conversely, Chile’s government is making strides. It has designated 41% of the country’s waters for protection, and, last year, the government proposed (albeit unsuccessfully) to revise the constitution, in part to bring in broader ocean-management measures, including more stringent controls on coastal salmon farming.There’s still time to turn the ship around. Key to this will be the implementation of measures to hold nations accountable for their promises, for which Nature and others have previously advocated. This, in turn, needs better progress metrics. In this respect, researchers can and are playing a crucial part3. There’s also a need to finance help where it’s needed. According to one analysis, implementation of SDG 14 will require an extra $150 billion a year4. But implementing some SDGs will make funding available for others. Ending harmful fisheries subsidies, for example, should free up between $22 billion and $35.4 billion a year5.Much of the extra funding required for SDG 14 has already been negotiated through other forums, such as the UN’s Green Climate Fund. And last December, as part of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, nations agreed to raise at least $200 billion a year by 2030 from public and private sources to fund biodiversity protection, both on land and in the water.This isn’t just about dewy-eyed sentiment for our beautiful blue planet: the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people depend on the oceans and the life they sustain. There’s much that scientists can do to achieve ocean sustainability. But to get SDG 14 back on track for 2030, world leaders must stand by the promises in their rhetoric. More

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A growing agricultural sector is one of the greatest global threats to wildlife. But an analysis shows that in Costa Rica, diversified farms — which host a variety of crops, as well as plants that emulate natural habitats — could help to stem the loss of some forest birds1.

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Conservation biology More

Caroline Giuglaris was inspired by student demonstrations around the world against climate change.Credit: Joly Victor/ABACA/Shutterstock

After starting my PhD in biophysics at the Curie Institute in Paris in October 2020, I was startled by the amount of waste that comes out of a laboratory: sterile packaging, excess chemicals that can’t be reused and all kinds of plastic containers. And I became more aware of this issue thanks to the School Strike for Climate, in which secondary-school students, inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, skipped Friday classes to participate in demonstrations demanding climate action.In 2020, my department (130 scientists across 13 teams) launched an internal sustainability initiative called the Green Physics Lab, which I asked to join. I decided to deepen my knowledge of academia’s environmental impact. The more I dug into the topic of sustainable research, the more passionate I became. I started to realize that the waste that my lab produced was only one small part of its carbon emissions — a concept that the initiative had not yet addressed. All those pipette tips were just the tip of the iceberg.In 2021, I discovered the work of Labos 1Point5, an international academic collective that aims to reduce the environmental impact of research. This group gathers resources and develops tools to help scientists to reduce their carbon footprints. As a result, I decided to take on a challenge with Jean de Seze, a labmate in my PhD programme. Could we measure our department’s carbon footprint and set our lab on a trajectory that was compliant with targets set out in the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which describes the impact of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels?We are not experts in carbon accounting and have not yet investigated other environmental impacts such as biodiversity pressures, pollution or water use from our lab activities, but we did our best to follow the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a tool that has been adopted by many governments and industries, with our limited resources. You can do it too. Here is an overview.Start by assessing your carbon footprint …I started by collecting information about our existing footprint by looking at energy consumption, a list of lab purchases and travel details. I then converted these data into a standardized metric, known as carbon dioxide equivalents.The first tranche of data collection was difficult, because we had no idea who had access to the numbers or who was willing to help. For instance, it took us a few months and help from our department director before the facility-services office gave us heat- and electricity-bill data. And we had to earn the trust of the head lab manager before we could access the database containing information on purchases and travel. There were many discussions on how to analyse travel data while complying with data-protection regulations. Since we first collected those data, we’ve gained our colleagues’ confidence and now know who to contact for help, which makes things easier.To estimate the lab’s final footprint, I multiplied consumption by CO2 conversion factors that I found in the literature1 and in the Labos 1Point5 database2 for emissions of purchases. This can be done using a spreadsheet.Another useful option is entering all the data into Labos 1Point5’s open-source online tool. We found that our department released into the atmosphere the equivalent of 4 tonnes of CO2 for each person per year.… but don’t dwell too much on the detailsRefining a carbon-footprint estimate is very time-consuming. We first focused on obtaining a rough assessment for our team. We then shared our results with our colleagues and broadened our analysis to include the whole department.We identified key elements that contributed greatly to our footprint, and started thinking about how to reduce their impact. In most labs, the main emissions are related to purchases (especially biochemical reagents), energy consumption and air travel. We found that, in 2021, consumables accounted for 44% of the department’s emissions (total purchases made up 69%), heating and electricity accounted for 20% and air travel accounted for 6% — at that time, travel for international conferences was still curtailed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first recommendations were to encourage teams to share chemicals and stocks to reduce purchases, and to raise the freezer temperatures to reduce electricity consumption.Broaden your baseTo deepen our impact, we needed to make our results known to the department. Our first discussions with the lab director last January were broadly positive.Those on the leadership team helped us when they could, but they warned us that some of our proposals would be hard to implement. Indeed, current institutional policies (which are changing) usually do not take carbon emissions into consideration. For example, they might favour the cheapest option for longer travel, which is often by air.After several months of gathering and analysing data, we presented our results at our department’s weekly seminar. The response was overwhelmingly positive, especially from the younger people. After that seminar, we reached a critical mass of 25 volunteers, whom we organized into four working groups: electricity and information technology, travel, purchases and plastic and waste. Each group had two tasks: to improve the estimate of our current carbon footprint, and to propose rules to reduce it in the future. There is also a communications group that works with the department to facilitate guideline implementation.Jean and I now lead the Green Physics Lab. We have monthly meetings at which we share our hurdles and progress and debate ideas, and I have integrated the working groups’ results into the bigger picture.Get into actionFor the first steps you take, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are many resources online to help you, including Labos 1Point5, My Green Lab and the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework. In our lab, we aim to reduce our use of consumables by testing the suitability of reusable glassware for common items, and we use tubes made of plastics constructed from renewable biomass materials. We have also reduced our use of sterile plastic for non-sterile tasks.The department’s largest suppliers now deliver orders twice per week for everyone, instead of several times per day for each team. Each month, volunteers run a bike-repair workshop to encourage people to reduce carbon emissions on their commute by cycling to work. With the department director, the Green Physics Lab members agreed on a lab policy to encourage people to raise freezer temperatures from –80 °C to –70 °C. A few teams in the department, as well as others at the institute, are testing this.This side project is not part of my PhD work, and in 2021, it was mainly a weekend task. But I am now fortunate to be funded by my lab for the extra work, equivalent to two days per month entirely dedicated to the Green Physics Lab, on top of my PhD grant.Set a targetQuantifying your current carbon emissions is good, but how will this translate into the future? Set short- and long-term goals, and assess your progress often. We proposed an ambitious plan to halve our emissions between 2021 and 2030. We also wrote a ‘green statement’, which was debated and voted on by the lab council, to formally acknowledge the need for an environmental transition in our workplace. We can now refer to this statement when we advocate concrete actions.For instance, one proposal that we are debating is using trains instead of planes to travel in France. We aim to implement this policy by 2025, and hope to put more stringent rules into place between 2025 and 2030.Communicate, communicate, communicateI try to update our department members on our progress frequently, to keep the buzz on sustainability in their heads. We also organize sustainability challenges and workshops and share interesting articles on the subject. We will hold our first symposium on sustainable research in October.We know that some of our proposals, such as reducing air travel and switching −80 °C freezers to −70 °C, are, understandably, not popular. Having an open discussion on the pros, cons, feasibility and constraints can help to reach an agreement. And we found that having senior researchers in the group on our side helped us to convince others to get on board.Finally, external communication is paramount. Since we have started this journey, we have realized that many labs are further along in this process than we are, but information on their carbon footprints, data usage and the initiatives that they have adopted can be hard to find. I try to promote our work at conferences and seminars — even when they are unrelated to sustainability — with posters and talks.Celebrate small successesYou will probably meet a lot of resistance, refusal or, worse, deadly silence, during this journey. Celebrate every bit of progress that you make. Don’t be too hard on yourself if the world is not ready for your green ambitions. More

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Sharks that are protected from fishing in New Caledonia’s Coral Sea reefs and lagoons — a World Heritage site since 2008 — are being subjected to a culling programme by the New Caledonian authorities to reduce attacks on tourists (see go.nature.com/44pykzk).
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests. More

The majority of kākāpō (Strigops habroptila), a critically endangered flightless parrot endemic to New Zealand, have had their genomes sequenced1.The rotund, green birds used to thrive across the country’s islands, but their numbers plummeted once humans and other invasive mammals arrived. Conservation efforts over the past few decades have seen a modest recovery to 252 individuals, as of August 2022.A team of researchers and conservationists, led by Peter Dearden, a biochemist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, sequenced the genomes of 169 kākāpō, from both living individuals and stored samples. At the time, this represented nearly the entire kākāpō population.
Can the world save a million species from extinction?
With these data, the researchers could look at the genetic diversity across the whole species and identify specific DNA sequences that are linked to traits that could affect the birds’ survival, such as chick growth or susceptibility to disease. “We have managed to associate genetic variation with observed traits, like growth, and can predict how that trait should be reflected in offspring, allowing us to identify problems earlier and prioritize vet treatment,” says Dearden.Data from the entire population could help to identify risks in individuals, he adds. “Kind of like personalized medicine for parrots,” says Dearden.“Their work nicely demonstrates why it is important to invest in genomic sequencing for endangered species, which can then be built upon as the field develops,” says Rebecca Taylor, a conservation-genomics researcher at Environment and Climate Change Canada in Ottawa. “Until now, most programmes have focused on minimizing inbreeding, which is an important goal,” she adds. “But with very endangered species, being able to incorporate the genetic basis of known fitness traits, such as disease susceptibility or fertility rates, into a breeding programme has clear advantages for the survivability of the species going forward.” More

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