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Brazil and France have launched a new challenge to countries to put oceans at the centre of climate action.
On Monday, June 9, 2025, at the UN Ocean Conference, the two countries called on all nations to place ocean-focused action at the heart of their national climate plans – also known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs – ahead of the UN climate summit COP30 Brazil is hosting in November.
Alongside Brazil and France, an inaugural group of eight countries, including Australia, Fiji, Kenya, Mexico, Palau, and the Republic of Seychelles, has joined the initiative.
“For Brazil, the Blue NDC Challenge represents a key opportunity to strengthen ocean-related climate action and to emphasise the essential role of ocean-based solutions in achieving emission reduction targets,” says Marina Silva, Brazil’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change.
“Through this initiative, Brazil seeks to advance international cooperation on ocean climate action in the lead-up to COP30, and to underscore the need for all countries to fully integrate the ocean into their national climate strategies.”
Silva added that in its most recently submitted NDC, Brazil had explicitly included ocean-based climate actions for the first time. That includes commitments like establishing programmes for the conservation and restoration of vital marine ecosystems such as mangroves and coral reefs.
40 per cent of Brazil’s territory is located at sea, and it hosts marine ecosystems of global significance – including the only coral reefs in the South Atlantic and the world’s largest contiguous mangrove belt along the Amazon coast.
Oceans-based actions are vital for wider climate goals
NDCs are the centrepiece of countries’ efforts to reduce emissions and limit warming to 1.5°C under the Paris Agreement.
Countries remain largely off track for meeting the Paris goals, according to the most recent UN emissions gap report, with the next round of climate pledges needing to deliver a “quantum leap in ambition” to give the world a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
Nations were due to submit updated plans in February, but only 11 of the 195 Paris Agreement signatories made the formal deadline. As of early June, just 22 countries have so far delivered their enhanced NDCs.
Brazil is one of only five G20 countries that have submitted updated plans alongside the US under the Biden administration, the UK, Japan and Canada. The real deadline is now September, when the plans will be tallied up before COP30.
As the world prepares to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement this year, the Blue NDC challenge is aimed at highlighting the role oceans can play in enhancing these plans.
“Ocean-based climate solutions can deliver up to 35 per cent of the emissions reductions needed to keep 1.5°C within reach,” says Tom Pickerell, global director of the ocean programme at the World Resources Institute and Head of the Secretariat for the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy.
“But we are running out of time to maximise the ocean’s potential. That’s why countries must place the ocean at the heart of their climate strategies.”
Industrial marine sectors and natural ecosystems are “underused tools” in addressing climate change, Wavel Ramkalawan, President of the Republic of Seychelles, one of the eight inaugural countries that joined the initiative, added.
