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Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
At the end of each year, I presume to report of the State of the Ocean as viewed from where I sit after a year of following the recurring rhythm of ocean science, policy, education, communication, action, and public engagement. That is, after all, what the World Ocean Observatory claims to do: to observe and to insert into the inter-temporal interstices reports and responses perspectives to inform, to educate, and to communicate the state of the ocean week by week, year by year, now twenty-plus years of inquiry and opinion.
It is a big responsibility; it’s complicated; it’s often controversial; it is often contradictory; and so, how do you attempt such a digest that is informed, responsible, and credible, lest you be dismissed as mis-informed, irresponsible? You ask for help.
My source comes from a respected academic journal, a special report in BioScience 2025, published annually by Oxford University Press, in which a group of some 15 most accomplished science and policy researchers and observers offer a broad analysis of success and failures, progression and regression across a broad spectrum of the ocean’s impact on the human enterprise. It’s title – The 2025 State of the Climate Report: A Planet of the Brink – belies the confusion of climate with ocean, in my view, an error in that all aspects of climate are functions of all aspects of ocean, thus a misnomer from the outset. The state of the ocean, its sustainability, resilience, and climate is the underlying measure on which any valid evaluation of true state must depend. The sea connects all things.
The report addresses the most significant aspects of our being: population growth and concomitant consumption; land use, forestation, and fire; greenhouse gases and temperature; albedo - the balance of solar energy absorbed and reflected; ocean warming, sea level rise, and pH; climate change impacts and extreme weather; and interconnected consequential risk to biodiversity, ocean circulation, freshwater supply, hothouse effect on land and sea, mitigation strategies, and social tipping points.
The report is sub-titled: A Planet on the Brink. The conclusions are sobering and should be distributed across every platform to every person, to all of us who have an interest in a viable, sustainable future. It merits repetition here in part:
“The accelerating climate crisis is now a major driver of global instability. Extreme weather is causing widespread impact and direct loss of life, while also driving resource scarcity, displacement, and civil unrest. These challenges are further compounded by weakening international cooperation and reductions in foreign aid. The converging pressures are straining national governments, multilateral institutions, and communities around the world. A strategy that embeds climate resilience into national defense and foreign policy framework is urgently needed. Without it, cascading risks may overwhelm systems of peace, governance, and public and ecosystem health.”
The conclusion calls for “courageous leadership, public engagement, and widespread institutional change…to ensure a livable and just future…aligning the deeper challenge of human civilization with the limits of the Earth’s natural systems.”
“The future is still being written. Through choices in policy, investment, education, and care for one another, and the Earth, we can still create a turning point. It begins by embracing our shared humanity and recognizing the profound interconnection of all life on the planet.”
It is a noble exhortation: on the brink. But will we listen? We have made these observations and recommendations over and over again, here on World Ocean Radio, and across innumerable reports and constant media refrain, and yet the state of the ocean continues to decline as the science and policy recommendations go subtly compromised by vested interests and public engagement remains ineffective as a global manifestation of what is described deep in the Report as “pluralistic ignorance.”
Is that who we are? Is that the future we will enable even when we know its catastrophic outcome? What will it take? What will it take? As this year closes, let’s ask—and answer—that question. What will it take to reverse the content of this report next year, on the improving state of the ocean in 2026, a step away from the brink?
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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