Healthy marine ecosystems are vital to the planet’s well-being and realization of sustainable blue economies. Marine ecosystems help maintain livelihoods, bolster food security, mitigate climate change, strengthen resilience, and conserve globally significant biodiversity. Coastal marine hypoxia, oxygen depletion leading to "dead zones", is a serious and rapidly expanding environmental threat to these shared global values. Today, hundreds of hypoxia zones suffocate marine life across millions of square kilometers with extreme benthic mortality and catastrophic fish die-offs. With the threat of coastal marine hypoxia growing quickly and quietly, there is an urgent need to accelerate targeted knowledge, policy, financing, and best management practices to avoid continued depletion of marine biodiversity across our shared oceans.
The objective of the Clean and Healthy Ocean Integrated Program (CHOIP), led by FAO in partnership with ADB, EBRD, CAF, UNESCO/IOC and GWP, is to address marine hypoxic zones by curbing coastal pollution from agriculture, industrial and municipal sources through policy and regulatory measures and infrastructure investments combined with nature-based solutions. In doing so, the program will foster the enabling environment to advance countries’ efforts toward sustainable blue economy goals. The CHOIP will catalyse a transformative change by expanding upon the current baseline and promoting existing national and large marine ecosystems (LME) capacities, capture emerging innovative funding opportunities and scale up effective programming supported by GEF and others.
Why is Marine Hypoxia a threat?
Today, hundreds of marine hypoxia zones suffocate marine life across millions of square kilometres with extreme benthic mortality and catastrophic fish die-offs. While the threat grows quietly and quickly, the world’s ability to address increasingly severe and complicated challenges has not kept pace. Global awareness and action remain limited.
What causes marine hypoxia?
Excess nutrients (eutrophication) released into marine environments trigger harmful algal blooms (HAB). As these organisms die and sink to the ocean floor, the decomposition process causes oxygen depletion or hypoxia. Severe hypoxia under 2 mg/L creates barren “dead” zones devoid of marine life. Agriculture, industry, and urban pollution sources are the main hypoxia drivers with each sector releasing vast amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic nutrient pollutants into marine ecosystems. Atmospheric nitrogen, climate change and altered sea temperatures further complicate hypoxia challenges.
How will the CHOIP address the challenge?
The CHOIP will engage fourteen (14) countries representing nine (9) LMEs. Each Child Project will contribute to the achievement of the overall goal and will advance solutions to address fundamental barriers through a complimentary set of components, outputs, and activities adapted to local conditions and targeting national priorities.
With a strong focus upon vulnerable LMEs, the CHOIP will support the establishment and strengthening of knowledge management, policy, investment, and best management practice tools to prevent new marine hypoxic zones, halt further oxygen depletion in current hypoxic zones, and promote innovations to assist countries restore hypoxia degraded ecosystems.
FAO will lead the CHOIP via a Global Coordination Project (GCP) in partnership with ADB, EBRD, CAF, UNESCO/IOC and GWP. This innovative cohort of cooperating institutions will help ensure effectiveness and amplified impact by advancing and accelerating transformational change at all levels.
What is the impact potential of the CHOIP?
The GEF investment and programmatic approach represents a ground-breaking opportunity to accelerate coastal marine hypoxia solutions. With $109 million in GEF funding and $748 million of co-financing leveraged, the CHOIP will help strengthen the architecture required to address marine hypoxia with the immediate result of substantial and enduring Global Environment Benefits.
The CHOIP will contribute to co-benefits, including progress towards sustainable blue economies and associated ecological, social, and economic well-being of countries and LMEs. The program will also advance several Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) targets. The program supports GEF-8’s “Healthy Planet, Healthy People” framework by tackling the interdependency between human well-being and a healthy environment.
CHOIP Core Indicators
