We are excited to announce that the Oostende Declaration in which the 100+ ocean experts and stakeholders call for concerted international and intergovernmental efforts to create a robust, resilient and sustainable surface ocean carbon observing system has been officially recognized as a commitment at the UN Ocean Conference 2025.

This significant milestone stems from a collaborative international workshop co-organized by IOCCP and held in Ostend, Belgium, in 2023. As part of this initiative, the Surface Ocean CO₂ Network (SOCONET) has formally become a GOOS observing network which helps to further integrate ocean carbon observations into the information delivery to UNFCCC assessments, WMO’s Global Greenhouse Gas Watch or WMO’s State of the Climate Report amongst other critical management and policy making bodies. We hope that submitting the Oostende Declaration as a UNOC commitment will trigger additional communication pathways for our continuous efforts to operationalize the ocean carbon and biogeochemistry value chain.

The commitment was submitted and is led by the ICOS ERIC Ocean Thematic Centre, IOCCP, SOCONET interim Steering Committee and the EU project TRICUSO.

To read more, please visit the UN website: https://sdgs.un.org/partnerships/operationalising-surface-ocean-carbon-value-chain#description