Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all.
The forecast: country-level cases will move before a binding London rule does
My forecast is that between now and April 2027, marine CDR governance will advance more through national cases built by individual practitioners than through a binding decision from the parties to the London Convention and Protocol. The parties met this month and, as the Columbia Climate Law Blog reports, debated marine CDR governance under an agenda item on marine geoengineering including ocean fertilization. Debate is the operative word. Meanwhile South African engineer Caitlin Wale, founder of Kinjani and a Senior Fellow in the Ocean Visions GEOS fellowship, is building a case for South African leadership in marine CDR through SAILOR, an initiative that convenes scientists, industry, policymakers and communities. She holds no government mandate. She is making an argument. My claim is that arguments like hers, turned into national processes, will decide where ocean experiments proceed over the next six months, because treaty text moves slowly and the people writing it are still assessing the question. This is my reading of the sequence, not a reported fact.
30 days: the London meeting record is the first test
Check the published outcome of the London meeting. If it reports continued assessment and discussion, the forecast is on track. If it reports a binding decision specific to ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE, adding alkaline material to seawater so it holds more dissolved carbon), the forecast is already in trouble. I expect assessment language, because the Columbia post describes a debate rather than a vote on text. That is an inference from one blog summary, not from the meeting documents, which I have not seen.
Second indicator: whether SAILOR produces anything written. A published engagement plan or a named list of South African participants within 30 days would show Wale’s case turning into a process rather than a pitch.
90 days: more country documents, and an OAE preprint that cuts the other way
The Dutch exploratory report from the University of Twente, TU Delft and Deltares maps ecological and social aspects of large-scale carbon removal and offers recommendations for research and governance. It is a second case of a country working out its own responsible-CDR framing while the treaty debate continues. Over 90 days I expect at least one more such national document. That is an extrapolation from two data points, so weight it lightly.
Here the evidence does not all point my way. The CDRXIV preprint by Steffen Swoboda and colleagues on OAE application considerations, not yet peer-reviewed, concludes that OAE deployment as currently envisioned is “likely unfeasible” and names the absence of field-scale experiments as the most critical bottleneck. That is a negative result for anyone picturing national processes approving large ocean projects. It narrows what a country case can deliver in 90 days to permission for small field experiments, not commercial deployment. The OAE trial in the Gulf of Maine I covered earlier is exactly the kind of experiment the preprint says is missing, and it happened while the London parties were still debating. Experiments are running ahead of the treaty.
180 days: acceptance is earned through local consultation, and London will still be catching up
Livia Fritz (@liviafritz.bsky.social on Bluesky) reports that consulting local communities and scientific experts during project planning was the strongest driver of public support in her study. Caveat: that study covers hypothetical carbon removal projects in general, not ocean projects specifically, so applying it to marine CDR is a transfer, not a direct finding. Still, consultation is the layer that national convenors control and treaty parties do not, and SAILOR is built around it. By April 2027 I expect field experiments to be proceeding mainly in jurisdictions with a visible convening process and rarely in jurisdictions without one. The data cannot yet distinguish whether convening causes permission or simply accompanies it.
What would prove me wrong
Four things, any one of which is enough:
- The London Convention and Protocol parties adopt a binding, OAE-specific decision before April 2027.
- SAILOR produces no written output, plan or participant list by April 2027.
- The Dutch report leads to no follow-on national process or research call.
- New OAE field experiments start in countries with no visible national convening process, which would mean projects follow something other than the “country case”.
The bet
By April 15, 2027, the London Convention and Protocol parties will not have adopted a binding OAE-specific rule, and at least one documented written output from Wale’s SAILOR initiative in South Africa will exist. Both halves are checkable. If you are planning or buying ocean-based removal, spend the next six months tracking who is convening whom in which country, because that is where the near-term permissions will come from.
Citations
- Columbia — debated marine CDR governance — academic source
- Oceanvisions — building a case for South African leadership in marine CDR
- Utwente — maps ecological and social aspects of large-scale carbon removal
- Cdrxiv — OAE application considerations
- Bluesky — @liviafritz.bsky.social on Bluesky — Bluesky post