No single body governs ocean carbon removal. From the London Protocol to national permits, here is the patchwork of rules taking shape — and the gaps.
Ask a simple question — who gives permission to remove carbon from the atmosphere using the ocean? — and you quickly discover one of the strangest facts in climate policy: nobody, exactly. Ocean carbon dioxide removal (CDR) sits across a patchwork of treaties written decades before the field existed, national laws that vary wildly, and voluntary standards that are still being drafted. Understanding that patchwork matters, because the rules being written in the next few years will decide whether ocean CDR becomes a credible climate tool or a cautionary tale.
There is no global ocean CDR regulator. Instead, governance arrives in layers:
Each layer is incomplete. That is both the risk and the opportunity: the rules are being written now, and they're being written by people willing to show up.
The most consequential instruments for ocean CDR are the 1972 London Convention and its 1996 London Protocol, which govern the dumping of wastes and other matter at sea. They were written to stop polluters, not to regulate carbon removal — but several ocean CDR approaches involve placing material into the ocean, so they fall squarely into scope.
The key nuance: the London Protocol regulates dumping, defined partly by intent. Whether a given CDR technique counts as dumping — and whether it qualifies for the scientific-research pathway — is a live legal question being worked through technique by technique.
The Protocol applies to the high seas and EEZs, and many coastal states mirror its logic in domestic law. A project that ignores the London Protocol conversation is ignoring the direction of travel everywhere.
The 2023 agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction — the BBNJ Agreement ("High Seas Treaty") — adds another layer. It creates mechanisms for environmental impact assessments and area-based management in areas beyond national jurisdiction, where most large-scale ocean CDR would eventually operate. It is not yet in force (it requires ratification by sixty states), but once active it will give the international community tools to scrutinise big ocean interventions that currently have essentially no specific oversight.
Other relevant instruments include the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (the constitutional framework for all ocean use), the Convention on Biological Diversity (whose 2010 decision urged caution on geoengineering), and the Paris Agreement, which governs how removals feed into national climate accounting — we cover that intersection in Article 6 and the Ocean.
Almost all near-term ocean CDR happens within national waters, which means national law governs. A project typically needs some combination of:
The difficult truth is that most countries have no bespoke ocean CDR permitting regime. Projects are squeezed into frameworks built for aquaculture, dredging, or scientific research. That creates uncertainty on both sides: developers can't predict timelines, and regulators are asked to judge novel risks with tools designed for familiar ones. A growing number of governments — in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific — are consulting on purpose-built frameworks, but as of the mid-2020s the landscape remains genuinely fragmented.
Even where you may operate, you still need to prove what you did. Monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) is where governance meets physics, and it's the thinnest part of the stack:
Voluntary market initiatives are racing to fill the gap with interim frameworks, but until government-backed accounting rules mature, every credit issued rests partly on a standard-setter's best judgment. Our view at Tidewright — set out in our impact methodology — is that claims should be conservative, transparent and openly revisable as the science firms up.
One area of genuine progress: the research community has been building its own rules. Multiple scientific societies and research funders have adopted or proposed codes of conduct for ocean CDR research covering transparency, environmental baselining, community engagement and pre-registered publication of results. Several national academies have published research agendas emphasising small-scale, reversible, well-monitored trials.
This matters because research is the gateway. Most legal regimes distinguish small legitimate research trials from commercial deployment. A field that does its research responsibly earns the right to scale; one that cuts corners will find every door closed. The history of ocean iron fertilisation — where one unapproved commercial experiment coloured a decade of perception — is the standing warning.
Analysts across law, science and industry broadly converge on a wish list:
Tidewright is a fictional company created as a design and content demonstration — but the position sketched here reflects where serious practitioners in this space are landing: work inside national waters, on ecosystem restoration with centuries of precedent; measure conservatively through platforms like our fictional Canopy Ledger; publish everything; and treat emerging international rules as a floor, not a ceiling. The governance gap is real, but the answer to weak rules is not to exploit them — it's to act as if the good rules already exist.
Some approaches, in some places, under existing permits — yes. Coastal ecosystem restoration (like kelp forest and seagrass restoration) is lawful and increasingly encouraged. More novel open-ocean techniques face uncertainty under the London Protocol and national law, and several are effectively limited to scientific research.
It regulates the placement of matter at sea. Parties have agreed ocean iron fertilisation should not proceed outside legitimate research, adopted a framework for assessing marine geoengineering, and are actively examining other techniques such as biomass sinking. Interpretation continues to evolve.
Indirectly. It governs how countries count removals toward their climate targets, including through Article 6 international transfers, but it doesn't license activities themselves. See Article 6 and the Ocean for the accounting side.
At minimum: the relevant national environmental and maritime authorities, with meaningful consent from affected coastal and Indigenous communities, plus independent scientific review. If credits are sold, the standards body and registry add a further verification layer.
Unlikely soon. The realistic trajectory is tightening coordination among existing treaties, model national laws, and convergence of voluntary standards into public ones — which is why the next few years of policy work matter so much.
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