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Raw materials still drive relations, but China’s presence in the region is changing, with fewer loans, shifting investments and tensions with the US. 

By Fermín Koop, January 7, 2026

China’s relationship with Latin America looks set to undergo a period of reconfiguration rather than retreat in 2026.

Although China remains a key partner for most of the region, direct lending and investment has slowed and heightened trade tensions between China and the US have also tested relations. The result is a more cautious relationship, marked by selectivity and an increasingly competitive international context, experts told Dialogue Earth.

Latin American countries maintain their role as suppliers of strategic resources for the Chinese economy, with minerals, soybeans and other agro-industrial products, as well as energy, of vital importance. The structure of this relationship is not new, but it takes on renewed relevance in a global landscape marked by the acceleration of energy transitions, the search for food security, and geopolitical tensions between China and the United States.

“China remains interested in Latin America for the same fundamental reasons it was a decade ago: resources and markets,” Margaret Myers, managing director of the Institute for the Americas, China and the Future of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, told Dialogue Earth.

Trade data reflects this continuity. China has established itself as the main trading partner of countries such as Brazil, Chile, and Peru, while the region at large is importing a greater quantity of Chinese-made goods, from consumer goods to industrial and technological equipment. For many Latin American countries, this dynamic reinforces a dependence on raw materials rather than value-added exports and deepens their trade deficits.

From an environmental perspective, the demand for minerals critical to the production of batteries, electric vehicles and renewable energy has increased the value of known deposits and accelerated the exploration of new projects in Latin America. But this has also given rise to social and environmental tensions with communities in mineral-rich areas. Lithium in the Southern Cone and copper in the Andes have become strategically important not only for China but for the global economy as a whole.

“The energy transition is intensifying competition for resources that are already generating social and environmental tensions in the region,” said Parsifal D’Sola, founder and executive director of the Andrés Bello Foundation, a Colombia-based think-tank focusing on China.

Less financing, more strategic focus

The contraction of Chinese financing to Latin America is one of the clearest features of the current state of the relationship. Data from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center confirms a trend that has been consolidating since the end of the last decade: Chinese loans to countries in the region – primarily from the country’s two development finance institutions, the China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank – have declined after peaking in the mid-2010s. In recent years, the volume of new loans has been limited, though a small upturn was recorded in 2024. Meanwhile, debt payments have continued.

This retreat does not, however, mean a total absence of Chinese financing, or a wider abandonment of its relationship with Latin America. At the forum between China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) held in Beijing in May, China reaffirmed its commitment to the region and announced new lines of financial support and cooperation, highlighting shared development goals. The emphasis was placed less on bilateral loans and more on cooperation mechanisms, financing for specific projects, and political coordination.

The change is also reflected in official discourse. In its most recent policy document on Latin America and the Caribbean, the Chinese government reaffirmed the importance of the region as a key partner, but placed the emphasis on “high-quality” cooperation, with greater emphasis on sustainability, technological innovation and alignment with the energy transition. This is its third policy paper on the region, but unlike previous iterations, the text devotes more space to sectors such as clean energy, electromobility, the digital economy, telecommunications and smart infrastructure.

In practice, this reorientation is translating into more targeted investments and a greater presence of Chinese companies through equity capital, acquisitions and partnerships with local players, experts told Dialogue Earth.

For Rebecca Ray, a researcher at the GDP Center, this pattern is particularly visible in Brazil, where she says electric vehicles have become “a top priority” for investment. “There are no more powerful partners in this area than China, which has shown immense interest in collaborating with Brazil,” she added. At the same time, Ray told Dialogue Earth that the broader outlook across the region is mixed, and that in countries such as Mexico, friction around such investments and trade may arise, linked to both the country’s nationalisation of its lithium resources and trade tensions with the United States and China over tariffs.

Critical minerals are central to this new phase. Lithium, copper, and even rare earths are the focus of investments and agreements aimed at securing the supply of key inputs for China’s battery, electric vehicle and renewable energies. According to the Boston University report, although the total volume of Chinese financing has decreased, the economic relationship has become more diversified, with a growing role for individual companies as the protagonists and less prominence for the Chinese state as a direct lender.

“Looking ahead to 2026, the drivers will be multidimensional: trade and investment, technological cooperation and energy,” Jorge Malena, director of the Asian Studies Committee of the Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI), told Dialogue Earth.

Geopolitical competition

Beyond changes in the volume or sectors of investment, a key variable affecting China’s relationship with Latin America today is the intensification of competition with the United States. In 2026, the relationship between Beijing and Washington is likely to remain on unstable ground, with effects also likely to be felt in the region, which many in Washington view as its own backyard. Sectors such as trade, technology, infrastructure and security have been sources of tension, transforming economic decisions into strategic ones.

For Francisco Urdinez, a researcher and director of the Impacts of China in Latin America and the Caribbean (ICLAC) research group, the recent Chinese policy document on Latin America “is a good guide that shows China’s commitments and values to the region, with a strong emphasis on multilateralism and a rhetoric of horizontality, which presents the relationship as South-South”.

However, he warned that this message is impossible to read without taking the US into account. “The return of the United States to the region is driven by the idea of regaining quasi-imperial hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, and that implies, explicitly or implicitly, removing China from Latin American space,” he said.

In this context, he suggested that any Chinese advance in strategic sectors may be interpreted by Washington as interference in its sphere of influence. “Everything China does in the region can be read as a threat, and that opens the door to pressure to question projects, break ties with Chinese banks or reduce trade dependence,” Urdinez said. The tension is no longer just about large infrastructure projects, but also about more specific decisions related to telecommunications, data, energy and technology, he argued.

Myers said countries in the region will find it “increasingly difficult to avoid choosing sides” as the dispute intensifies. “The relationship between the United States and China is not in repair, it is in flux, and it can go in many directions,” she said. In that context, she added. This will be particularly important when it comes to projects the United States considers strategically important, “such as a telecommunications network, a space facility or a waterway”, she added.

Key political swings in several Latin American countries will also test this dynamic.

In Chile, following the recent victory of the hard-right president-elect José Antonio Kast, there has been no suggestions of a break with China – its top trading partner and destination for a significant share of its exports – but his incoming government could harden its political alignment with the United States. In Colombia, uncertainty about the direction of the next government raises questions about the continuity of its rapprochement with China, seen during the current administration of Gustavo Petro. In Brazil, regardless of electoral cycles, the relationship with China appears today as a structural pillar, especially in sectors such as energy, mining and electromobility. In Venezuela, the recent imprisonment of former president Nicolás Maduro by the United States could mean constraints for China’s engagement with the country.

“The China-US competition will enhance strategic polarisation, which will offer opportunities to governments in the region,” said Malena. “In infrastructure, technology and energy, we would see financing alternatives, disputes over standards and flagship projects that will condition the alignments and strategic autonomy of Latin American states.”

A new president wants to balance China ties with more openness to the US. Experts are more concerned by risks to environmental rules, amid an economic crisis. 

By Rocío Lloret Céspedes, December 23, 2025

On the night of 19 October, Rodrigo Paz was celebrating his victory in the second-round runoff of the Bolivian elections when he received a call. Christopher Landau, the United States deputy secretary of state, representing Donald Trump’s government, had called to congratulate the new president.

Paz himself drew attention to this communication during his first public appearance, after the announcement of a win for his centre-right Christian Democratic Party, with 54% of the votes, over Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga’s Libre alliance.

That night, several world leaders and heads of state contacted Paz. But the message from the senior US official was clear: after almost two decades of estrangement between Washington and socialist governments in Bolivia, a new political, commercial and diplomatic era had begun.

The new president said this would be “a close relationship”. In the weeks before taking office on 8 November, Paz made a visit to the United States in search of support to resolve an economic and energy crisis that has gripped Bolivia since early 2023. Upon returning from his trip, he told Bolivian business leaders that his team had “already secured the dollars, petrol and diesel that we so desperately need”.

Washington has seen the change of government as an opportunity to rebuild diplomatic ties that had been strained since 2008, when then-president Evo Morales declared former US ambassador Philip Goldberg persona non grata, accusing him of leading the “division of Bolivia”. In a statement from the US Embassy on 20 October, secretary of state Marco Rubio said that his country “is ready to partner with Bolivia on shared priorities”.

On the other side of global geopolitics, China – Bolivia’s main trading partner during the leftist governments of Evo Morales (2006-2019) and Luis Arce (2021-2025) – also congratulated Paz, days after the election results were announced. On Friday, 24 October, Chinese leader Xi Jinping sent a message to the president, in which he said that since the establishment of their diplomatic relations 40 years ago, bilateral ties “have maintained good momentum for development”.

Parsifal D’Sola, director of the Andrés Bello Foundation, which studies relations between China and Latin America, said he was sure a call with Chinese officials would also have taken place on the night of Paz’s victory. “I have no proof, but I have no doubt that one of the first calls received by the new government was from China, precisely to initiate a new conversation, develop a new relationship, and find out exactly what the positions are,” he told Dialogue Earth.

Paz has taken office in a context of deep economic crisis, reflected in a 2.4% fall in GDP in the first half of 2025, and on 17 December declared the country to be in an “economic emergency”. The new president is seeking to move beyond the long-standing socialist ideology that has governed Bolivia, pursue international support, and set a new direction for his government. Having campaigned with promises of “capitalism for all”, Paz has said this new era is “going to open Bolivia to the world and the world to Bolivia”.

But this “opening up”, combined with shifting geopolitics in the region, have left some observers fearful that environmental protections could be loosened in pursuit of economic development.

“We are in a very complex economic situation, the result of economic decisions taken over the last decade,” said Óscar Campanini, a sociologist specialising in environment and development, and director of the Bolivian Centre for Documentation and Information (Cedib), an NGO. “In this context it is possible that environmental and social requirements could be relaxed, under the pretext of facilitating foreign investment.”

Bolivia in the spotlight

Bolivia and China have had diplomatic relations since 1985. In 2006, with the arrival to power of Evo Morales and his Movement for Socialism, those ties began to grow from simple exchanges of ambassadors and helped contribute to making China, today, Bolivia’s main trading partner.

“From 2010 onwards, it is clear that investments involving Chinese cooperation intensified,” said Marco Gandarillas, a senior researcher at the environmental organisation Latinoamérica Sustentable (LAS). China is Bolivia’s main bilateral creditor, with loans mainly for infrastructure. In addition, its companies – state-owned, private and mixed – have become the main contractors for road works. Gandarillas, who is soon to publish a report focused on Chinese investments in the country, told Dialogue Earth that according to his calculations, more than 1,466 kilometres of roads and bridges have been built by Chinese companies in the Bolivian Amazon alone. He said that these are key to connecting rivers, which also serve as important routes for transit and trade in these often remote regions.

According to data collected by Gandarillas, between 2010 and 2019, Bolivia signed 38 bilateral agreements with China. Citing research on economic cooperation agreements and national ratification laws, he counts 16 Chinese loans totalling over USD 2 billion and during that period; other sources tracking Chinese overseas finance have put this figure even higher, at over USD 3 billion. Alongside significant support for a planned hydroelectric dam and a vast steel project, much of this financing went towards three major road infrastructure projects: the Rurrenabaque–Riberalta highway, the El Sillar dual carriageway and the Espino–Charagua–Boyuibe highway.

The latest data available on the official website of the Central Bank of Bolivia refers to a debt with China of USD 1.37 billion as of June 2024.

Ning Leng, a professor of political science at Georgetown University whose research has focused on China and its overseas finance, told Dialogue Earth that China has three key interests in Bolivia: minerals such as lithium; agriculture, especially soybeans; and infrastructure, which is the area where it has had the greatest impact.

Analysts agree that the arrival of a new government, far from generating suspicion in China due to economic and geopolitical rivalry with the United States, is an opportunity to reaffirm ties.

“The pragmatic approach that Beijing has adopted with centre-right or right-wing leaders – Bolsonaro in Brazil, or Milei in Argentina – is an example of how China can adapt to political changes in the region without affecting or compromising its foreign policy objectives,” said Carlos Piña, a political scientist specialising in China-Latin America relations.

In the case of Argentina, Javier Milei recently received new financial support from the Trump administration, amounting to USD 20 billion, without this interfering with previous projects and initiatives that his left-wing predecessors, Cristina Fernández and Alberto Fernández, had established with China.

The same thing happened with Brazil. At present, relations between China and President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva are “comprehensively strategic”, researcher Gandarillas said, but he added that they had also largely been so when the far-right Jair Bolsonaro was in power from 2019 to 2022.

In Bolivia, the letter sent by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to his counterpart Rodrigo Paz indicated a similar consistency, and goes further, offering to take the China-Bolivia strategic partnership “to a new level” of “comprehensive strategic”, an official designation in Chinese diplomacy. This is the level of relations China has determined with other South American countries, including Brazil and Venezuela, explained Gandarillas.

From necessity to environmental flexibility

Construction projects led by Chinese companies in Bolivia, and across Latin America, in recent decades have often met with environmental and social concerns, although in 2024 China accepted a number of recommendations from the UN Human Rights Council in relation to its overseas investments, including to consider more robust legislation incorporating the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

Analysts such as Campanini of Cedib and Gandarillas from Latinoamerica Sustentable are concerned that the new Bolivian government has so far shown a great imbalance between its emphasis on economic and environmental issues. “In the name of saving the crisis, we will end up raffling off or sacrificing areas, ecosystems and communities that subsist on very valuable resources,” said Campanini.

Indigenous peoples of the Bolivian Amazon and civil society organisations have voiced similar concerns, particularly following the recent dissolution of the Ministry of the Environment, which has been merged into a unified Ministry of Development Planning and the Environment. Furthermore, the appointment of agro-industrial businessman José Fernando Romero Pinto as minister for the new department prompted the Block of Peasant and Indigenous Organisations of the Northern Amazon of Bolivia (Bocinab) to declare a “state of alert”, further describing their concern on the changes to the environment ministry, and around a reported “strengthening of the Ministry of Mining and Metallurgy”.

Speaking to Dialogue Earth, Bocinab founder Luis Rojas Mogrovejo said they would not allow further mining activity in their territories, which have already been affected by mercury pollution. At a time when the new government is seen to be organising itself to try to lift the country’s economy, Jenny Duri, president of the Yaminahua-Machineri Indigenous Peasant Territory, told Dialogue Earth that “mining in our territory is a danger”.

The Paz administration has rejected initial criticisms around its environmental prospects, emphasising that it sees development and environment as complimentary rather than opposing forces, and pitching its ministry reshuffle as breaking down a disconnect between conservation and production.

In an interview with Dialogue Earth, Jorge Ávila, vice-minister of environment, biodiversity, climate change and forest management and development, said that Bolivia “is not in a position to abandon development, because the country is bankrupt, which doesn’t mean we’re going to disregard the environmental aspect”.

An attorney with experience in environmental, forestry and public policy issues, Ávila argued that Bolivia needs to abandon an approach that sees certain sectors forced to comply with environmental regulations “as if it were a punishment”. On the contrary, “we have to persuade and demonstrate that by doing things right from an environmental perspective, we are creating better conditions for development in our country”.

Rocío Lloret Céspedes

In 2025, scientists warned the ‘planetary boundary’ for ocean acidification had been crossed. This is what that means and why it matters. 

By Anna Napolitano, December 23, 2025

The past 12 months have been worrying for researchers who study the chemistry of the ocean.

More and more evidence has been published showing that human activities are fundamentally altering this chemistry in an acidic direction.

At the end of 2025, it seems clear ocean acidification is pushing the largest habitat on Earth into a risky zone.

• How does CO2 in the atmosphere make the ocean acidic?
• How acidified is the ocean as of 2025?
• Why does this matter?
• What will happen to ocean animals with shells?
• Do we need to worry about humans and other animals, too?
• What is the ocean acidification planetary boundary?
• Is every part of the ocean affected in the same way?
• Can we learn from acidic oceans of the past?
• What can be done about it?

How does CO2 in the atmosphere make the ocean acidic?

Ocean acidification is part of the global carbon cycle.

When carbon dioxide dissolves in water, it forms carbonic acid. This acid releases hydrogen ions, which lower the seawater’s pH balance..

Carbon dioxide emitted by human activities may be largely released into the atmosphere, but it does not all stay there. Huge amounts are absorbed by the ocean. A study published in 2023 determined that the ocean absorbed 25% of anthropogenic CO2 emitted from the early 1960s to the late 2010s. This has so far saved humanity from greater global warming.

Because of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the past century, more CO2 has been taken up by the ocean, causing it to acidify.

How acidified is the ocean as of 2025?

Earth’s ocean has become roughly 30% more acidic than it was in the pre-industrial age, according to data from the European Environment Agency published in October. A huge part of that seawater pH decrease has come in recent decades. Just before the industrial revolution began in around 1750, Earth’s mean surface seawater pH was 8.2. By 1985 it had fallen to 8.11. By 2024, it was down to 8.04. 

This data indicates that pH at the surface of the ocean will decline even further by 2100, by between 0.15 and 0.5, depending on how much emissions are curtailed.

Also in October, researchers working at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) authored a study of ocean acidification models to quantify the global ecological and economic consequences of future acidity rises. “If in the years to come we continue on the current emission level, our models show that for most regions the ocean is on a trajectory toward worst-case scenarios,” says Sedona Anderson, lead author of the paper.

Why does this matter?

In May, a new study found that as acidification intensifies, the ocean’s capacity to absorb atmospheric CO2 weakens, reducing its ability to slow global warming. The explanation lies in chemistry: as the sea accumulates more carbon dioxide, its “carbonate buffering” capacity is reduced, making CO2 more chemically challenging to absorb. 

In March, researchers reported that the speed at which people are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere is much faster than the ocean’s natural capacity to absorb it without becoming acidic. This is profoundly altering the ocean’s chemistry. The consequences of the change are not yet fully clear.

What will happen to ocean animals with shells?

A study published in July explored the effects of ocean warming and acidification on two bryozoan species (invertebrate marine calcifiers) living in and around volcanic CO2 vents in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off Italy’s western coast. It found the populations of these animals are being increasingly depleted as the ocean warms in this particularly acidic environment. Calcifiers, such as corals, molluscs and terrapods, are small creatures with skeletons formed of calcium salts. Crucially, these creatures are foundational to food chains. They constitute, for example, about half of the diets of Arctic salmon.

In a collaborative study between Greenland and Spain published in 2016, it was concluded that calcifiers can meet the greater energy demands of processing calcium salts in more acidic environments by increasing their nutrient uptake; this has been seen on White Island in New Zealand. However, current models demonstrate that the ocean is becoming less hospitable, making it hard to provide the nutrients organisms need to cope with an already acidic environment.

Do we need to worry about humans and other animals, too?

While calcifiers are the first to suffer the consequences of a more acidic ocean, many other species, including humans, are set to pay the price if we continue on this trajectory. Upcoming research areas are focusing on the impact of changes in ocean chemistry on non-calcifying organisms.

In a summary about the “silent crisis” of ocean acidification published in April, experts from Spain’s Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM) highlight how data collected over recent decades is demonstrating that non-calcifying species, such as fish and squid, are suffering from impaired respiration, altered behaviour and reduced reproductive success in a more acidic environment.

The behavioural impacts are thought to be due to calciferous structures within fish ears that, like corals, cannot form properly in environments that are too acidic. This correlates with diminishing behavioural responses to danger. However, these are preliminary studies that focus on one generation of marine creatures only. More research in the field is needed.

Two other studies published this year, one observed in the Pacific and the other in the Mediterranean, found that the development and survival of mollusc larvae are negatively impacted by lower pH levels. A reduction in the number and characteristic variations of adult species was detected.

Though a direct correlation between increasingly acidic oceans and human health has not yet been explored, more than a billion people worldwide depend on healthy coral reefs for food and coastal protection. If these reefs become more fragile because they cannot properly build calcium shells, this will generate cascading problems. An acidic ocean will mean millions of dollars in lost fisheries and tourism revenue, because frailer coastal reefs will not provide the same level of coastal protection from storms.

What is the ocean acidification planetary boundary?

Perhaps the biggest news in ocean acidification this year is the warning that a new “planetary boundary” has been crossed.

In 2009, a group of scientists led by Potsdam University in Germany set out what they named planetary boundaries – nine limits to systems that have kept Earth’s environment stable during human existence. This project has become the annual Planetary Health Check report. One of the nine boundaries it investigates is ocean acidification. This is measured via the levels of aragonite in the ocean. Aragonite is a form of calcium carbonate used by huge numbers of sea creatures to build their shells and skeletons. When the ocean acidifies, carbonate ions become less abundant, making shell formation more difficult.

When the nine planetary boundaries were first established, the “safe limit” for acidification was set at a 20% reduction in the ocean’s aragonite levels, known as “aragonite saturation state”, compared to pre-industrial conditions. This figure was met with scepticism by some researchers in the field, who felt it was too high. “When the scientific community saw the data in the first planetary boundaries report, it quickly became apparent that that was just a best guesstimate,” says Helen Findlay, a professor at Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the United Kingdom.

In the years that followed, significant effort and resources were invested in analysing acidification in both pre- and post- industrial times, as well as in trying to better determine the acidification threshold after which catastrophic consequences take place.

In 2024, Findlay’s team reassessed those original thresholds. In a paper published in June 2025, the team concluded that the reduction in the ocean’s aragonite saturation state needed to be much lower than previously thought to keep the ocean healthy: around 10%, rather than 20%. The team estimated that by 2020, the global ocean was, on average, within the “uncertainty range of the ocean acidification boundary”. In other words, the boundary may have been crossed.

The deeper into the ocean the researchers looked, the worse the findings were. At 200 metres below the surface, 60% of global waters already indicated acidification levels beyond the newly established safe limit.

A few months later, the 2025 edition of the Planetary Health Check report confirmed this, reinforcing the idea that Earth’s oceans are now operating in a risk zone. Furthermore, following data revisions and thanks to advancements in data modelling since 2009, the 2025 report says the ocean’s pre-industrial aragonite saturation state was higher than originally thought. This means the drop in levels between the pre-industrial era and today has been more significant, blowing past even the team’s original ocean acidification “safe limit” threshold of a 20% drop in aragonite.

“When we published our first Planetary Health Check, several ocean experts told us that they could already see impacts on marine environments that didn’t align with an ocean operating in a safe zone,” says Levke Caesar, a member of the team that produces the report. “So, we thought that we should have reconsidered our study using more advanced data.”

Is every part of the ocean affected in the same way?

Ocean acidification is a widespread global problem but increasing amounts of research suggest some regions are more affected, especially the Arctic. These northern waters are very cold, and cold water dissolves CO2 more easily than warmer water.

In addition, some parts of the Arctic have major inputs of freshwater from rivers and melting ice. This reduces the local waters’ ability to buffer changes in pH, as an analysis of historical data published in April confirms.

Studies show the Arctic Ocean naturally experiences regional and seasonal variations in aragonite due to changes in ice and rivers. For example, before humanity started pumping out huge amounts of CO2, around 5% of polar waters became seasonally undersaturated with aragonite because of these natural seasonal shifts, according to Plymouth Marine Laboratory’s boundary reassessment. In the 2020s, however, that figure has risen to 21%. Some polar organisms are starting to exhibit the impacts of this change, Helen Findlay says.

Other studies show that coastal regions are more susceptible to acidification than offshore waters. In coastal areas, agricultural fertiliser runoff can increase the amount of nitrogen that ends up in the ocean. This can react with oxygen, causing local acidification and amplifying emissions-related acidification.

Work published in November shows that oceanic upwelling systems, such as the California Current, can also exacerbate acidification.

Can we learn from acidic oceans of the past?

More than 300 million years ago, volcanism massively raised CO2 levels in the atmosphere. This led to the end of what is known as the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age. As is happening today, the ocean sucked in much of the plentiful CO2 being held in the atmosphere, becoming more acidic in the process, as well as warmer and lower in oxygen. This led to the near-disappearance of calcifying organisms, such as coral reefs, and a mass extinction event sometimes called the Great Dying.

Scientists still debate the exact cause of that extinction event. “We know that the planet will find a way to survive. The question is if humanity will cope with the transition,” ponders Hana Jurikova, a researcher at the University of St Andrews’ School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, in Scotland. She was a lead author of an article on the end of the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age, published in early 2025.

Over the course of millions of years following the Great Dying, changes in oceanic pH were brought about by rock weathering and the degradation of mineral shells. The waters became less acidic, and ocean life rebounded until the dawn of the industrial age.

What can be done about it?

“Working in this field, I’m often depressed,” says Caesar. “Global regulations are needed, but there are also many solutions that [can] benefit most of the [planetary] boundaries.”

Zooming in, studies indicate that managing marine environments at a local level has a significant impact on multiple stressors. Such management can help mitigate the impacts of acidification. Restoring mangroves, wetlands and marine forests of algae, such as kelp and seagrass, and supporting farmers to reduce nutrient runoff into the ocean, can all help to balance seawater pH.

Other research is scoping out solutions to help the ocean recover from human-induced damage through direct intervention, too. Some of it considers the feasibility of adding minerals to the sea that could help reduce acidification, for example. Though other consequences of such an artificial strategy may be hard to predict.

Scientists consider acidification to be an escalating problem. This is primarily because achieving drastic reductions in anthropogenic CO2 emissions is looking increasingly challenging. Without those, ocean acidification will continue.

Anna Napolitano