MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands paper on climate change and oceans' biodiversity accepted at the COP 27 summit in Egypt

Marine Scientist Dr Narissa Bax from SAERI, made the presentation during her attendance of COP27 in Egypt

The Falkland Islands presented a paper on climate education to the COP 27 summit meeting in Egypt which was accepted as part of a presentation to a hub on climate change consequences and possible solutions. Marine Scientist Dr Narissa Bax from the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (SAERI), made the presentation during her attendance of COP27.

“It’s the first time that they’ve had a climate education hub at COP, so that is an area where you put in a bid to present within that hub, and ours was accepted,“ said Dr. Bax. “So what we’ve done is organized it around the deep sea, the climate, and perspectives from the next generation of deep sea researchers.”

Dr Bax explained her role is part of a panel of UN COP organization researchers from around the world.

“From our standpoint, being a delegation that’s very heavily focused on the oceans was most positive, there’s often - and continues to be - quite high emphasis placed on terrestrial ecosystems.

“You don’t see as much ocean related information as I was expecting. There’s very little of the land that we have not explored,” Dr Bax reflected.

“But in the ocean you have a very different aspect to that. The areas that we have explored largely are coasts, and that only accounts for about 2% of the oceans. The majority of the ocean is deep sea, about 98%.

“We get a glimpse of it from fisheries, from being at sea, from the science that we’ve done. And so we need to be cautious, in terms of exploitation and then again... in terms of what we at SAERI work on, the conservation of our biodiversity.

”That’s largely what is keeping our planet alive and functioning, the biodiversity of the ocean,” concluded Dr. Bax.