Today. Really appreciate you joining us here today. Thanks for coming out this morning. I think weve got a really exciting morning of discussion. First of all, brief introductions, im Whit Saumweber director of the stephenson ocean security project. We are a program thats focused on the intersection of marine sustainability challenges and National Security issues. And from my point of view, there is no better representation of that nexus than the issue of Climate Change and how its impacting our oceans and what that means for our broader world. A few weeks ago the ipcc released reports taking deeper dives into the effects Climate Change is having on this world. One focused on the impact on lands, and the ocean and the sphere. That report is fascinating. Its the current state of the science about what we know, what we understand, the impacts of Climate Change are going to be on the ocean. And it posted a really, really stark view of the differences between taking strong, aggressive action and taking no action at all, continuing on the course that we are on. It talked about a real divergence in paths with respect to change and adaptation. Based on what kinds of actions we take. Now, theres been quite a bit of discussion i think over the past couple of weeks about that report. Were going to talk a little bit about that report today and whats in it. But i want to take a special focus on how the challenges and impacts of the report describes, translates into policy issues and in particular, how those issues are reflected in the security space. Climate has been called a readiness challenge, a source of instability. It poses acute threats for today and strategic threats for tomorrow. But the ways in which the physical and ecological impacts translate to specific Security Issues can be vague and unfortunately as we know, bureaucracies dont do well with vague. I hope our conversation can move that dialogue forward and think deeply about how theyre intertwined. If we do so, maybe we can move toward a more direct approach to coming up with solutions. We need to manage the coming world of today for the changed world tomorrow. We have two excellent panels. The first panel is going to talk about the science of the report and some of those findings and how those findings might affect specific policy issues. The second panel is going to talk about how they translate into security challenges and close up with a keynote where ill be joined by richard john stevenson. I would like to thank you again for coming today and introduce our first panel. Ill run through everybody here and ask our first speaker to come up and say a few words. We have ko barrett, bob watson, we have paula bontempi, and weve got kathy mills. Thank you, again for joining us and, ko, i would like to welcome you on stage. Thanks, whit. Good morning, everyone. Its my job this morning to kick off the conversation by providing some of the most relevant findings from the report that we put out just two weeks ago. And as an introduction to the report, were looking at the ocean and cryosphere. From the very stops of the highest mountains, the polar regions, to the deepest parts of the ocean and what we find is that already there, and especially there, were seeing evidence of humancaused Climate Change. Is someone going to advance these slides for me or should i magically do something . Great, lets go to the next one too. Im not going to be able to talk about the high mountains thanks the coastal some of the coasting impacts in my initial presentation although happy to dive into those with questions. But i kind of view the report where do i point . So ill actually just kind of continue a little bit, well let the slides catch up to us. So kind of one of the main messages emerging just from a macro level from the report is that for decades the ocean and the cryosphere have been taking the heat for Climate Change. Were seeing the manifestations of that across permafrost, glaciers, ice sheet melting, changes in ocean chemistry and resulting changes in biodiversity, the movement of fish, et cetera. Okay. Great. So the way ive structured this report is to just focus in on a couple of the changes that the report finds have already been observed, to briefly touch on what possible futures could look like, and then to talk about some of the implications for the for marine policy and for species migration, et cetera one of the main report findings is not a new one in terms of green land and an arctic ice sheets melting. The new finding here is that these are the major drivers of accelerated Sea Level Rise. And these areas are melting from below which is causing its now kind of surpassed ocean thermal expansion as a major driver for Sea Level Rise. During the last century, we find that it rose by 15 centimeters. Right now, sea level is currently rising at more than twice that rate and continuing to accelerate. With the highest scenario productions, we could be over one meter of Sea Level Rise by 2100. Also, over the last 40 years, Arctic Sea Ice has decreased for all months of the year, but sea ice changes in september which is when we usually see the lowest sea ice is likely unprecedented for the last 1,000 years. Next slide, please. The loss of summer sea ice and spring snow cover on land have contributed to amplified warming in the arctic where surface air temperature has increased by more than double the global average. The ocean has taken up 90 of the excess heat in the climate system and about a quarter of humancaused co2 emissions, making the ocean warmer, more acidic, and losing oxygen. Marine heat waves, which is a new topic, have doubled in frequency since the 1980s and have become longer lasting, more intense, and more extensive, especially harming warm water corals, kelp forests and the distribution of marine life. Next slide please. I know you cant see the details on this slide but i include it because this is a graphic representation of what our choices are on Emissions Reductions look like for some key areas. On the top left is the projections for marine heat waves moving into the future. The blue is kind of a projection for the lowest emissions scenarios that we studied in our report. The red is a projection for the highest emission scenarios. And you can see quite clearly the difference if we choose a more intensive Emissions Reductions pathway. Below that frame is a graphic on Arctic Sea Ice extent which isnt a good news story no matter what scene now pick, quite frankly because even with a high emissions reduction scenario were still looking at something near 50 reduction. But with the higher emissions scenario, you see near 100 reduction of sea ice extent in the arctic in september. And the large graphic shows the difference that would happen with these two emission scenarios with regard to Sea Level Rise going out to 2300. So stark, stark difference depending on what action pathway we take. Next slide, please. Clearly there are implications for marine sustainability and security. Since about 1950, many species have undergone shifts in their geographic range and seasonal activity due to warming, sea ice change, chemical changes to their habitats. In general eco systems are moving polar. Our warming has contributed to a decrease in maximum cash potential, compoundsing impacts from over fishing for some fish stocks. In some areas, changing conditions have contributed to the expansion of suitable habitat. But its not easy. Sometimes the governance structures regulating fishery dont make it possible to take advantage of the benefits that could be seen. Shifts in species distribution and abundance has challenged international and National Ocean fisheries governance including in the arctic and in terms of regulating fishing to secure ecosystem integrity. Next slide, please. Food and water security have been negatively impacted by changes in snow cover, lake and river ice and perma frost. These changes have already disrupted access to and food availability within herding, hunting, subsistense live areas, harming the livelihoods and cultural identity of the arctic. I had a chance to visit alaska last month and saw firsthand how Indigenous Peoples are having to change where they go to hunt and its quite extreme. So they have adjusted the timing of activities to respond to changes in the seasonality and the safety of land, snow and ice conditions. Summer time arctic shipbased transportation has increased over the past two decades with sea ice reductions. This has implications for global trade yes. It poses new risks to the arctic marine ecosystems. And coastal communities. When i was in nome just within a 24hour period two tourist cruise ships came into port having traversed from gleanland across the north sea. Next slide. Just final slide for me, the main takeaway from these messages the faster we act, the more able we will to make changes. Look forward to the conversation. Thanks, whit. [ applause ] thanks, ko. Its a pleasure to be here this morning. I was the former chair of the intergovernmental platform for eco System Service but what ill talk about here is what came out of this. Ko has covered this already in many respects. You heard how were changing the earths climate. Its becoming warmer. Oceans are rising, sea ice is melting, the glaciers are melting, the oceans are becoming more acidic, more pollutants in the oceans, more metals in the oceans, its overfinished most of the ocean. Weve got a problem. I just came back from an arctic meeting and the question they were posing is, is the melting of sea ice an opportunity or a threat to National Security. That thats indeed the dilemma these ministers and they were Foreign Ministers that were there not environment ministers. But its clear that since the 1950s many marine species have undergone a shift in nature. Theres been a shift in both species composition in each of these ecosystems. Also, different interactions now between species and these are having cascading affects on both the structure and the functioning of these ecosystems. And just to put it in perspective, these Eco Systems Services are absolutely essential to human wellbeing. Theres been a polar shift in different marine species, both towards the north, in the northern hemisphere, and the south, and since the 1950s, theres been shifts of up to about 50 kilometers per decade in organisms in the upper couple of hundred meters of the worlds oceans and 30 kilometers for species on the sea floor. These are significant changes. Arctic production has increased in the waters and springtime blooms are occurring earlier in the year. Unfortunately many associated Marine Mammals and seabirds have been very negatively affected by habitat contraction. 50 of coastal wetlands have been lost in the last 100 years. 50 . Changes in sea grass meadows and kelp, theyre expanding at high latitude. But contracting at low latitude. Significant changes. Coral reefs already adversely affected by the changes weve seen in that temperature more than anything else. But coral reefs are clearly one of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world. They are sensitive to sea surface treatment, they are sensitive to a lesser degree of Sea Level Rise, theyre sensitive to landbased pollution. Theyre already in serious danger and with these projected changes in temperature in the future, its not unreasonable to say that coral reefs have a very low probability of surviving. What i like about this report is it did look at the full range of plausible temperature changes. The 1. 5 degree report looked at 1. 5 degree celsius. This report did look that we might be on a higher trajectory to a world thats 3, 4 and 5 degrees celsius. And thats my view. Based on all the evidence we got. The Paris Agreement is a superb agreement. The trouble is the current pledges are totally and utterly inadequate to meet a 1. 5 world or 2 degree world. Much more likely to be on a path of 3 to 4 degrees world and this report plays out what are the implications of these higher changes in temperature and one of the most sensitive systems to these changes in temperature are indeed coral reefs when also affected by these other pressures as well. Since the 1980s, all he gae blooms, major range expansion increased frequency. I wont talk about fisheries. Were going to hear much more profound talk in a few minutes. Theres no question, Ocean Acidification along with sea ice changes, continued loss of sea ice is affecting the polar eco systems in particular. One of the major issues that was talked at the arctic forum a couple of days ago and, of course im sure youll hear far more from the fisheries expert and that is to what degree is this going to provide opportunities for fishing in the arctic region versus, as i said earlier, potential issues that we have to look on that National Security. But the key point that was talked about at that particular meeting and is raised in these reports, if one is going to have far more exploitation of the natural resources, theyre now much more amenable to extraction. Will it to be done in a sustainable manner or in an unsustainable manner in the which we exploited the worlds oceans to date basically. So fundamentally where are we . Were in trouble. Its very simple. Biodiversity is in trouble on the oceans, on land, everywhere, and these are not environmental issues. These are Development Issues, Economic Issues, Security Issues, theyre moral issues, and social issues. And in reality, the results are very similar, thank goodness. To the report we put out in may of this year, as we said, Marine Biodiversity is impacted at an unprecedented rate by human activities. 33 of reef forming coral sharks are threatened with extinction. Only 3 of the worlds ocean is free from human pressure. 3 , basically. Globally, fishing exploitation has had the biggest impact on Marine Biodiversity, but climate is likely to be the dominant driver in the next few decades which is why we have to look at Climate Change and biodiversity as one single issue that cannot be looked at any more as two separate issues. We have to get the conventions to Work Together and the key issue on all of these things is, these are issues that affect all Government Departments and the stove piping of Government Departments and the stove piping of u. N. Agencies means we do not have the right governance structures to address these particular issues. And the other issue which comes at very nicely in this report is the emerging of plastic pollutions, also a major threat to Marine Biodiversity. With that, all i can say is, we need to act now. We should have acted 10, 20, 30 years ago. [ applause ] good morning, everybody. I do have some slides, if its possible to use them. That would be great. Thank you to whit and csis for the invitation. This is not my normal crowd. I come from nasa. The very nature of what we do at nasa whats more wellknown are things like, you know, exploration of our solar system and beyond, the mars rover, and then of course the more well known program for looking at the moon and beyond. But we have part of our mission to explore the earth, to understand the earth and think about our observations, models and what we learn about the earth and our research for not only basic and applied science, but for societal benefit. And we do this at nasa using an earth observing satellite fleet. You may be thinking, whats the relevance to Something Like the ipcc report . We have 23 on orbit missions and as you can see from whats shown on the screen, a number of missions that are in formulation, development, and some that have lasted long beyond their scheduled missions and this becomes critical. If we want to look at the entire global earth system and look at the properties of the earth system over time, then this is one way to do it. This is not the only way to do it. This is at a global scale and the partnership with the observations which i have learned over time sustained observations of anything are a very difficult thing to sell and where they come into play is where you have reports like the ipcc. You want to reduce uncertainties in your models. You need observations to do it. These observations are critical. We dont just use the low earth orbit. We actually use our space station as well, owned and operated by a global community, peppered with earthobserving sensors, absolutely critical for getting a higher spacial, higher resolution view of some of the earths system. This becomes very important when we think about reports like the ipcc. Now, i was tasked to talk to you about ocean production and i wish that everybody in this room knew what that was or why they should care. If you dont, im going to tell you. Im going to walk through this. The ocean has whats known as food chains and a food web. And theyre shown here in these photos. I was highly accepts negative to this photo because they were from the encyclopediaber britainnica. If you look at the righthand side, what you can look at are the producers, right here on the bottom. The primary producers. We have a type of phytoplankton. They are the equivalent of land plants. They go through the process of photosynthesis where they take Carbon Dioxide and water and produce organic carbon. And oxygen. Thats as much science as ill get with you right now. Why is that important . You just heard details about Carbon Dioxide and what that does to earths climate and the impacts of that on everything living and things not living. And why humans should care and the economics. So lets get to that. Who cares about these tiny plants in the ocean. Phytoplankton conduct 50 of earths primary production with their biomass turning over in the ocean every two to six days. How do you gauge that change and has that kind of impact on the Global Carbon cycle . Ice challenging to observe but its possible. Phytoplankton mitigate onethird of human Carbon Dioxide emissions each year. You should start to see why these organisms are important in understanding our earths system. The economics of it, i did a simple Google Search of u. N. Reports and came up with tidbits referenced in recent u. N. Reports. Youll hear more about this in a moment. But fisheries support about 12 of the worlds livelihoods. The ocean contributes greater than 282 billion to the u. S. Gdp. The commercial value of u. S. Fisheries from just coral reefs, just coral reefs, exceeds a hundred Million Dollars and the u. S. Harmful bloom events have an average impact of about 50 million each year based on the region that theyre located in. When you start to translate those numbers and i footnoted them all in my notes, that adds up to big business and why we should care even more deeply about something not just for human wellbeing, but for our earth system and economics in general. Lets translate this even further. How do we do this from space . Some of the ipcc analyses and models and clungss are based on satellite data. From space, this is what a phytoplankton bloom looks like. Right there. The phytoplankton are responsible for going through photosynthesis and this has a huge impact on regional and Global Carbon cycling. Its these guys at play, doing their thing, turning over every two to six days. Remember, they sustain higher levels, secondary production all the way up through fisheries and apex predators that humans are familiar with and use for industry and economics, as well as recreation and et cetera phytoplankton blooms, they change the color of the water. If there are more of them, you can see the water appears different colors, in this case, greenish, certain type of phytoplankton which are indicators of Climate Change respond to Different Levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. They are taken up by the ocean. Along with physical observations we can see a tight coupling between Something Like primary production and the physical state of the ocean. We observe these variables together. As the report points to. And then we can get things that are outcomes of changing the earths system, meaning shifts in ecological species and a carbon balance. If you change one thing in the system, its likely that Something Else in the system is going to respond and understanding those responses allow us to adapt. In this case, Something Like this bloom can do things like reduce water clarity effects. That has an effect on local eco systems. So now taking it all home, what we can do at nasa is do sustained observations of the global oceans. What youre seeing here in the still shot this is a come possible assist 1997, the color bar on the upper lefthand side shows you how much chlorophyll which is a proxy for biomass which is a major input to calculate how much is in the ocean. The purples and darker blues are lower levels and the greens and reds and yellows along the coast are the higher levels of phytoplankton. This can be coupled to Something Like the analog on the land. And the upper right, you see the land vegetation index. Where this becomes powerful over time is that we can watch the earth breathe. You are actually seeing monthly averages of whats going on in ocean phytoplankton biomass supporting primary production and whats going on on the land over time. You can look at the arctic and the antarctic, you can see the snow cover and ice cover, you can see it change over time. You can look at areas like africa and see the greening going on, you can see the deserts in brown. You can see the lows, the response of the ocean to things like el nino when they occur in 97, 98 was a big one. At the start of this animation. You can see changes of phytoplankton at the lower levels. When you start to take some of these impacts that ko and bob have talked about, you think about your phytoplankton and the ocean and production and how important it is, if you think of your house plants at home, what do they need to grow . They need water, not so limiting in the ocean. They need sunlight and nutrients. And when you have effects like heating, warming its going to affect your levels and blooms. Its a dynamic system and those changes are important to identify with some critical observations. With that, ill turn it over to kathy to talk more about fisheries. [ applause ] all right. I also have slides, hopefully they can get queued up. Im a sign the activist at the gulf of Maine Research institute at the gulf of maine and the gulf of maine is one of the fastest warming regions in the world ocean. Since we sort of realized how rapidly the gulf of maine was warming, a lot of my research has focused on how these warming patterns are affecting fish populations, fisheries, and fishing communities and im here today to share with you some of the experiences related to fisheries in the northeast u. S. And hopefully using these examples to demonstrate that the findings and the key messages that are coming out of the special report on oceans and cryosphere are not far away and far into the future, they are messages that are relevant here and now. Were already seeing a lot of these changes occurring in fisheries in the northeast u. S. So i am going to in my talk today, attempt to highlight a few examples related to some of the key themes in this report and i thought this report does an excellent job of highlighting some of the physical changes were seeing in the ocean, particularly that the ocean is warming, warming rates are increasing and marine heat waves are increasing in frequency, and then also calling out and weve heard from a number of these speakers, how those changes are affecting the ecosystem, through changes in species, patterns. Ecosystems Services Including fisheries and how those affect people on the ground and communities. And then i will conclude with a little bit of touching on some of the challenges were seeing in fishery Management Systems, governance, and adaptation challenges. Just to orient you to some of the warming that were experiencing in the gulf of maine, this is a time series of our sea surface temperature anomalies back to the start of the satellite sea surface temperature record. And we have been experiencing a warming trend over time. The overall trend that i show in this figure is that the gulf of maine is warming. 04 degrees celsius per year. That doesnt sound like a lot. The Global Warming average is. 01 celsius per year. Were warming four times faster than 99 of the rest of the worlds oceans. And heat waves have become something that we are seeing frequently in the gulf of maine. The northeast shelf of the united states. I think that in 2012 we experienced a major heat wave that spanned the northwest atlantic and i think our work around this heat wave was the first time that the word heat wave was used in association with ocean and marine settings. During this event, we saw temperatures running two to three degrees warmer than the longterm average, all the way from Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, over to iceland and north into the labrador sea. During that summer, the gulf of maine experienced temperatures that were about three degrees warmer and weve seen heat wave events for substantial portions of 2016 and 2018 since that time. The warming trend, as well as the heat waves all have ramifications for species in the ecosystem. Im going to go through a few examples of changes that were seeing to fish populations and what that means for fisheries in the region. Im going to start with gulf of maine cod. Cod has historically been a really important fishery. Its the fishery at the heart of new england. It was the commodity that supported the colonial economy and fishing on cod has persisted for centuries. Over that time we have experienced periods of overfishing on cod, but in reason years the fishery Management Systems we put in place have really reigned in overfix and what we have seen in more recent years climate is throwing a new wrench into fishery management and introducing new challenges. So in the way that we do fisheries management, we take observations of fish in the ecosystem and put those together to try to develop an estimate of how large the population is. With gulf of maine cod, this process doesnt account for environmental conditions. But with cod, weve seen is that not accounting for temperature really led to major challenges in terms of how we assess the state of the stock and manage it on that stock. By not accounting for the rapid warming that we have seen in the gulf of maine, we were not picking up on declines of recruitment of cod that were tied to that warming trend and we were assuming that the stock could be fished harder than it could in reality. Even though the Management System was operating within the bounds of scientific information it was provided and fishers on the water were operating under those rules, the stock has been overfished in recent years because were not accounting for some of the major changes that are occurring in the ocean. When we look forward into the future, under a variety of temperature scenarios, the warm scenario were using is roughly equivalent to the 8. 5 temperatures and the hot scenario is aligned to the warming rates we have been experiencing in the region in recent years. What we see is when we project the population out to the future, under some temperature conditions we do expect the stock to recover to what we consider a sustainable level. But thats with no fishing happening on the stock. And under the warmest condition that we simulated, which is on par with our recent warming rates, we actually cant recover this stock to what we would consider a sustainable level. This points to both the need for considering how we keep temperatures within reasonable biological realms but then also how we manage to support stocks that are operating under different and new physical conditions. The future of cod in the gulf of maine will depend on fishing rates, fishing levels and temperature. I want to describe a little about our experiences with american lobster. [ no audio ] i want to show you in these figures, the gray dots are the time series of the population. You can see that the population has been increasing, while the population in southern new england is declining. Did that help at all . Its on . Okay. Ill just keep going. Hold it closer, got it. We have seen contrasting patterns in the gulf of maine and southern new england and through some modeling work that weve done, what were seeing in southern new england is that temperatures are exceeding thresholds that lobster can tolerate. The actual temperatures they are experiencing are contributing to the decline of that population. Whereas in the gulf of maine, weve moved into a sweet spot of temperatures that are encouraging lobster production right now. The gulf of maine is benefitting from this warming in terms of its ability to produce lobsters, but looking forward as temperatures dont increase that may not be the continued pattern. And i do want to highlight because it comes out in the special report on oceans and cryosphere the connection. We also looked at some of the management approaches that have been used for lobster in the different regions. In the gulf of maine, for over a century, theres been a practice of marking female lobsters that have eggs and throwing them back. A strong conservation ethic to return these females so they can continue to produce future generations of lobster and what we looked at is, if we had not had that practice in maine, how would these populations look now. What we see here essentially do i have a pointer . Is if the gulf of maine had fished on those larger female lobsters, the population would have been lower than it is in actuality whereas in southern new england, if those large female lobsters had been protected, the population could have been doing much better than it currently is. These issues are intertwined and need to be sort of factored together with one another. And i also i dont have a slide for this, but since we have talked about heat waves, i want to mention that the 2012 heat wave that we experienced had major ramifications for the lobster fishery. During that year, the temperatures warmed up earlier than usual, lobster landing started coming on line really early. What we saw was a breakdown in the supply change beyond that point. There wasnt capacity in place, there was an overlap between the american and canadian lobster season, it resulted in a glut of products sitting on the market and a backlog even at the processing stage that led to a major price collapse. This was an event that trig ear change in the conversation around whats going on with warming and Climate Change in new england. So i want to highlight that even though i dont have it in my slides. And then the last example i want to offer you is that we are experiencing changes in species distributions. In general, many species in the northeast are moving northward and to deeper waters as they try to track cooler temperatures. This is affecting fisheries as well. Here im showing you in the map a figure for where summer flounder are being caught and what you see in blue is that in the 1990s, summer flounder were being caught in North Carolina and virginia. Around 2010, those summer flounder catches were taking place in new jersey and long island. The fishery has shifted as the stock has shifted. And this type of pattern playing out across many species is also also creates the potential that new opportunities could arise as species move into waters that they havent previously occupied. But this is where how we govern fisheries comes into play. For summer flounder and species along the east coast of the u. S. , we use a process where the overall allowable catch is proportioned out to states. So states are given certain shares of the quota based on their historical landings in the fishery. For summer flounder, these were set in the 1980s and we didnt design a system that would plan for change in the future. We used similar types of systems for multinational arrangements for sharing the catch between countries. So this is a system that is currently sort of breaking down as we see shifts in species and it has a lot of implications for adaptation. Two changes that are occurring. Im going to end with a few comments related to one focused place, stonington, maine. It is most valuable port in maine. It lands 50 to 60 million worth of lobster every year and most of the landings are just lobster. 99 of the landings. In stonington, what we see is we expect those lobster the availability of lobster to decline by about 20 . There are new species moving in, like black sea bass and squid. So really the future of reall g stonington as a Fishing Community will be shaped by the ability to tap into the resources moving into waters they currently fish. And that gets back to our ability to create governance arrangements that support that adaptation. I want to highlight the future of stonington is not just about the ability to adapt to fisheries in the water. Looking at the prospect for a 20 decline in lobster has major ramal r ramifications for taxes at the same time for infrastructure investments. One of the issues is Sea Level Rise, particularly because stonington is connected to the main lying causeway. Its not just about adjusting to the species available. Its also going to be tied to the availability to provide short side infrastructure and the transportation network. Thinking about adaptation in wholistic manners that doesnt silence issues in integrating those together, i think, is a realm that we havent tackled in our approach in the past. Its an approach we need to invest in much more heavily moving forward. Thank you. We had a really great compelling conversation about what the report has to say with regard to coming impacts. And about how those impacts translate into eco system change. And i wanted to touch on a little bit something i think that is there but maybe gets lost in the dynamic of conversation around different pathways and mitigation pathway. Business as usual pathway. And thats that even under the most optimistic scenario, weve really locked ourselves into decades and in some cases centuries of change depending on the kind of factor were talking about. I guess this is a question just to the panel generally which is maybe you could comment a little bit on how weve moved beyond the steady state and how from your perspective were going to continue to see change even in the most optimistic scenario and what it might look like in the coming decades, and ill ask anyone who wants to take a stab at that. Well, as i said, the Paris Agreement which was endorsed by literally every country of the world including the u. S. Is on paper a superb agreement. It argues that we should keep Global Warming to less than 2 degrees celsius and try to achieve 1. 5. Were not on that pathway now. Were on a pathway to 3, to 4 degrees celsius. Even a 1. 5 or 2 degree world has significant impacts on marine bio diversity and fisheries. Were focusing here on the ocean, but the terrestrial implications of a 1. 5 or 2 degree are quite bad. 3 to 4 degree world, therefore, we have to put as much effort on adaptation to the changes as we do to mitigate changes. We weve really got to get government working with the private sector. Working with Civil Society to realize that there are incredible opportunities for transformation change to make our carbon system low carbon. To try to get close to the Paris Agreement. But as i say, we equally at the same time have to learn how to adapt to a changing climate. And i think this is going to be a real challenge, to be quite candid. And bio diversity terms, ecological terms, its the race of change thats going to make adaptation so incredibly hard. Not just the magnitude, but the rate of change. And were going to see further changes lost in both terrestrial bio diversity and in marine bio diversity. As ive said, the problem is these are not simply environmental issues. In some ways i wish they were. These are Development Issues in. They affect they affect food, water, security. Human health. Migration patterns of people being displaced by Sea Level Rise around the world. So you bring in social conflict. Even potentially armed conflict. So we really do need to recognize the Economic Issues as well. Climate change causes significant economic costs, actually, loss of bio diversity causes economic loss. And as i say, its a security issue. I think the challenge in front however, what i would say is i think most governments do now realize this where were failing is implementation because of vested interests trying to control unlike the status quo we have today. But we also have to think across Government Departments. All Government Departments have to Work Together on these issues. All u. N. Agencies and we have to work with the private sector. Its a major chance, but its doable. Both ippc we have laid down what are the technologies and policy changes . Evolution of Economic System basically getting rid of perver perverse subsidies in transportation, energy, fisheries, for example. Its doable. We need to have the political will. I would also add building off of your comment about the rate of change and the importance for bio diversity, i think the rate of change is also real sort of key element for adaptation of Human Systems as well. I mean, we see that in many cases people can cope with change, but only to a certain point. And being able to move beyond that, i think, humans only have the capacity to adjust so quickly in terms of how they do things. We need to think about putting governance and Management Systems in place that can inherently accommodate the dynamics of the eco system without having to renegotiate the terms of an agreement every time theres a change. I think were moving into a new era where were seeing change happen so quickly that Building Systems that inheshtly accommodate that change is going to be really important moving forward. You talked about how our management structures here in the u. S. Where we have the best fisheries in the world are not able to account for dynamic environment when we have fisheries. Theyre not migrated to an end point. Theyre going to continue to move as the Climate Changes in the coming decades. We need to build institutions that are dynamic and not just in a state kind of way but with the changing status quo. You talked about bio diversity. Can you talk about the feedback leave about resilience to change and how theres a real negative impact not just from the loss of bio diversity on existing services but on the ability to withstand change. Im not quite sure what youre looking at. Theres no question that as were losing bio diversity, we are losing resilient systems. Theres no question about that. Both terrestrial biosphere and the marine biosphere. These are fragile systems, and the problem is once you lose bio diversity, its irreplaceable, basically. So i mean, what this is obviously both marine and terrestrial. We actually said that one million species out of 8 million species were threats of extinction. Thats a huge number. Its not a sixth mass extinction like a lot of people say it is. Because on that we lost 75 of species in the historical past. But the trouble is as you lose individual species, you change the interaction between the species, and actually very much changes the dynamics, the resilience of the systems, the eco System Services they provide to us human people. And so we have to basically try to see how do you keep these eco systems intact . People tend to focus a lot on individual species, but the big challenge is keeping the eco systems intact especially terrestrial eco systems. So fundamentally, we have a major challenge. As ive said, there are practices and technologies that can address these issues in a fairly straightforward way. There really is a moral dilemma here as well. On my day job, i have a jurisdiction that looks at ocean exploration. Were still discovering new species every time we go out with an exploration tour. So the disruption to the systems that we still dont even fully understand is i think a trav us usty that has to be considered. Thank you. We have a few minutes for audience questions. I guess do we have mics . Id like to give than we have a short period of time before the break, maybe we could take three questions and go to the panel with the questions. Try to keep them brief and as much to a question as possible. So i see one person up here. Two people up here. Good morning everyone. I am a graduate student its not on. Is this better . Yes. Im a graduate student studying engineering and international relations. Thank you very much for your sharing, and theres a very insightful point during your discussion about how this Climate Change is a systematic manner and one of you mentioned how political governments can make a big difference, but heres my question. Bear with me. Im curious to know and i want to push forward a little bit. Instead of discussing the impacts, maybe you already have the solutions and approaches to address the problem. Is it possible that we can utilize what poses as challenge right here into actually an advantage . Lets say because a heat waves is one of the biggest negative impact that comes along with a Global Warming, but is it possible that we can transfer this thermal energy into something that is a usable energy, and also because this lady she mentioned nasa will there would be loss of work on the plants or bacterias like a microwave, like the agents that can transfer them carbon die yok ied and sunlight and use complexes. So with the emerging biologying tech necks as well is it possible we can utilize some of the bacterias or plants that is sensitive to this heat or sensitive to this warming temperature, you know, to actually do something good and transfer all this Carbon Dioxide into the oxygen . Great. Thank you. Up here in the front. Im steve barks, retired physicist. Ive been looking at the regulatory issues about surrounding the zones, and how Development Processes in both europe and the u. S. And probably everywhere else has put a great deal of pressure on the nursery areas where officials fry, develop, and how does this affect the fisheries . And what do you think can be done to enhance the preservation of these, because the rising sea levels will push the marshlands back, but the cities will block that progress. So youll end up with some limitations and reduction of those marshlands. Okay. Thank you. And then one more over here. Thank you. Matthew, im a aaasdp fellow at u said. You spoke to the need to come up with ways to manage our fisheries better in light of the challenges. I know theres been a push to eco system based management of fisheries going back to this thing, but if were actually changing the baselines and changing the distribution ranges, how do we then basically have a moving system . Right . The eco system is moving across the space. And youre going to have to have a Management System that has to go transboundary dealing with maybe even rethinking the law of the sea and the eez to be able to come to those challenges. If you could speak to that, that could be great. Thank you. So really good questions. Im going to sum prize quickly. We had one about the opportunities. Theres always winners and losers in any changing system coming with Climate Change. One about the challenge having to do with i think im going to summarize it by sawing the loss of coastal eco systems and the tension between needing to adapt coastal infrastructure and the loss of eco systems and the impacts. And the third which is a little more into the nature of the challenges around building the dynamic Management System, especially when it comes with international and intergovernment relationships. Toss that to the panel. Anybody can dive in on any one of those. I can probably start on the engineering and physics is sort of where i sit. Every time that theres a report, an assessment, a recommendation, an idea about engineering of some sort coming to the rescue of any sort of climate challenge, we read it with great interest. Nasa is not a policy institution. Right . Were more on the r d side and engineering side, but theres been reporting on geoengineering. Can we do things with it . People study alternatives. I think its good to encourage that. I have yet to see a proposed idea or solution that really understands the earth system or eco system as a whole, and takes every aspect into account before implementing everything. Its kind of like you know before you flip that switch that you may not be able to flip back and changing something or introducing a species into an eco system that may be decimated for a shortterm fix, we have to have a better understanding of all the aspects of an eco system and what the longterm implications of Something Like that is. Because you can draw you can dump a bunch of iron into the ocean, delay down co 2, but most models show its back in the atmosphere within 40 or 50 years. Okay . So shortterm fix. Longterm problem. The first question im glad paula could tackle. I think that to the couple of questions related to fish, obviously the question about nursery habitats is really important. We recognize that those are sort of critical habitat areas for many fish species that do, then, go onto either provide important prey in the eco system or to support fisheries directly. I would say, and this is something ive been interested for a while but havent been able to move down the path of, that we dont have a lot of information on how that habitat area and quality scales up to a population level and the ramifications beyond that. So without that framework in place, its really hard to determine if you see changes in aggregate area or location of different areas, how that will affect populations at a higher level. So i think this is a science gap that will be an important area to address moving forward. Particularly as we see distributions changing as well. Do you guys want to add anything to that one . No. All right. What about the idea that International Institutions need to adapt . International institutions need to adapt and how we think about our relationships across the eezs and across boundaries. Theres no question whether its a climate or diversity issue. I think theyre one issue now. We need institutions and organizations to adapt both nationally and internationally. Theres no question whatsoever about that. We dont have the right institutional organizational structures that either the national or international level. When we see transformative change is needed, one of those transformative changes is in government structures. The basic problem is theres no trust. Theres limited trust between governments, developed and developed. Let alone developed and developing. Limited trust between governments and the private sector. And the ngos and still until we all recognize where the major challenge for the survival of earth, and we need to Work Together, were not going to address these issues, to be honest. So trust and Building Trust is going to be a crucial issue. A question on bio fuels. Another thing we have to look at boy 19 bio diversity. Literally every model that says we have a chance at getting to 1. 5 or 2 degrees celsius relies on bio energy often called with Carbon Capture and storage. The trouble is if you go to largescale monoculture bio energy, it potentially could threaten bio diversity if youre replacing a mono culture and native forest or native grassland with a mono culture, or if you encroach on land, you threaten food and water security which is why you need to look at the issues together. Some bio energy can be good, but it has to be handled carefully. We have to look at the synergies and tradeoffs in all the solution space both technologies, pistoriuss, and practice between issues such as Climate Change and the u. N. Sustainable development goals. They are all coupled together. They cant be looked at one at a time. And on the geoengineering, we need to do a lot more research to understand the potential benefits and the potential risks. And we clearly should not be trying to geoengineer a world that we cant even understand at the moment. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Id like to break there for our coffee break and make sure we have time for coffee. Thank you all. I appreciate you joining us. I look forward to getting to some of these questions in the next panel as well. Thank