Existing gaps in ocean data must be plugged to meet growing demand for this information, while improving corporate reporting, executives at the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) told a webinar on Tuesday.

Speaking at an online event on ocean-related corporate disclosures, Tony Goldner, executive director of the TNFD, said “demand for this data is increasing”, and this is a “huge priority issue” for his organisation, as there are still significant gaps.

“There’s a lot of work to be done, and lots of things that need to be tackled,” added Cathrine Armour, director of data initiatives at the TNFD.

“Establishing the nature data public facility with the provision of nature-related data, which is what TNFD is doing, is about supporting access to data to meet the needs of the adopters … and for oceans operations, this includes the provision of ocean data.”

Ensuring that the information is traceable and collected in perpetuity is among the key challenges in closing the ocean nature data gaps, according to Armour.

“Data is often not collected consistently or constantly. Scenario modelling is restricted when looking at data that are only captured at a point in time,” she said.

“Physical risk metrics rely on a combination of both forward-looking biophysical and geospatial data, and so we need continuous collection programmes, and we also need standards to enable interoperability so that the multiple programmes can be integrated.”

FIT FOR PURPOSE

Armour also emphasised that data must be fit for purpose, as alternate sectors require different and sometimes unique data sets, and therefore have singular data gaps.

“For example, we need fishing vessel locations. We need seabed management data for offshore wind. And we need plastics data to look at ocean health and reduction of plastics within the ocean environment,” she said.

“We need to understand the data from the different data sources, including primary, secondary, and proxy data, so it’s very important that the data that’s collected is made fit for purpose, by sector and by issue.”

Kimberly Mathisen, CEO of Norwegian tech foundation Hub Ocean, also recognised the challenges in collecting and managing ocean data as one of the biggest barriers to quantifying corporate-level impacts.

“It’s super difficult to transform and combine this data into something that’s really usable and fit for purpose,” she said during the webinar.

“Equally, a challenge today is to unlock private data. Industries like oil and gas, who have been operational for decades on our ocean, have so far given relatively little of their data to the open landscape.”

Hub Ocean aggregates open and private data on a platform aimed at enhancing ocean-related decision-making.

The foundation is part of the Making Oceans Count consortium, which seeks to contribute to expanding the use of asset-level information for ocean activities, and unlock scientific marine and environmental data.

By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com

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