Brief documents on WOA II

The briefs provide a synthesis of relevant facts and information from the second World Ocean Assessment related to two key global issues (climate change and marine biodiversity) and two United Nations programmes (the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations decades known as the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration) that have been identified as priorities by the Group of Experts of the Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment, including Socioeconomic Aspects, and the secretariat of the Regular Process.

The briefs were prepared pursuant to the programme of work for the third cycle of the Regular Process, covering the period 2021–2025, which was adopted in July 2021 by the Ad Hoc Working Group of the Whole of the General Assembly on the Regular Process and endorsed by the Assembly in December 2021.

Output II of the programme of work provides for support to other ocean-related intergovernmental processes, including the preparation of a series of briefs. In the case of the brief on climate change, the intergovernmental processes include the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea, which focused its discussions on the themes “The effects of climate change on oceans” in 2017 and “Sea level rise and its impacts” in 2021.

The briefs were prepared by the Group of Experts with the assistance of the secretariat of the Regular Process, reviewed by the bureau of the Ad Hoc Working Group of the Whole and then considered by the Group at its sixteenth meeting.