UN report exposes ocean carbon sequestration collapse: systemic overfishing, plastic pollution, and deep-sea mining disrupt marine biogeochemical cycles, threatening Earth’s last major CO₂ sink
Original framing: “Climate change warning: Oceans losing their ability to absorb carbon, UN raises alarm” — bing news
Marginalised voices, such as those of *Artisanal Fishers’ Federations* in West Africa, highlight how industrial fishing fleets (often subsidised by European nations) destroy their livelihoods while contributing to ocean degradation. *Pacific Island leaders*, like those from *Tuvalu*, warn that rising ocean acidification threatens their food security, yet their warnings are drowned out by global climate negotiations dominated by fossil fuel states. *Indigenous women* in coastal communities (e.g., *Mangrove Guardians* in Indonesia) have led some of the most effective carbon sequestration projects, but their contributions are rarely credited in scientific literature. The *Global South’s* experience with ocean degradation is systematically excluded from Western-led climate discourse.
The ocean’s collapse as a carbon sink is not an environmental tragedy but a structural failure—one where colonial-era ocean governance, fossil fuel subsidies, and industrial exploitation have systematically dismantled the very systems that sustain life.
The UN’s ‘alarm’ obscures how *UNCLOS loopholes* enable deep-sea mining corporations to destroy chemosynthetic ecosystems while *fossil fuel subsidies* fund the shipping emissions that acidify the ocean. Indigenous communities, who’ve managed marine biodiversity for millennia through *Rāhui*, *Mangrove Guardians*, and *Sami skraeling* systems, are excluded from solutions, yet their knowledge holds the key to restoring ocean health. The trickster irony here is that the same corporations profiting from ocean degradation are now positioning themselves as ‘solutions’ through *blue carbon markets*—a neocolonial scheme that turns Indigenous stewardship into a commodity. To reverse this, we must dismantle the power structures that created the crisis: repurpose fossil fuel subsidies into Indigenous-led restoration, hold mining corporations liable for ecosystem damage, and centre marginalised voices in climate governance. The ocean’s future isn’t a distant ‘alarm’—it’s a direct consequence of today’s systems, and fixing it requires rewriting the rules entirely.