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For more than 60 years, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has promoted the peaceful use of nuclear science and technology for addressing major socioeconomic and sustainable development priorities at national, regional, and interregional levels. The Agency’s Technical Cooperation (TC) Programme is the primary mechanism for transferring nuclear and related technologies to its Member States, helping them to address their priorities in a variety of areas such as health and nutrition, food and agriculture, water and the environment, industrial applications, and, of course, the safe and secure use of nuclear energy. Here, we briefly describe the types of TC Programme projects that promote the sustainable development of coastal countries and the mechanisms IAEA uses to identify and support the projects. We highlight two of these projects. 

Ocean acidification (OA) is broadly recognized as a major problem for marine ecosystems worldwide, with follow-on effects to the economies of ocean-dependent communities. The urgent need to mitigate and minimize the impacts of OA is a scientific and political priority, as highlighted by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC, 2022) and by the inclusion of OA as a target in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In addition, over 20 years of strong scientific evidence on the impacts of OA provides compelling arguments for urgent CO2 mitigation. Reducing CO2 emissions will require ambitious regulatory and economic instruments, as well as effective systemic changes across governments and societies. It is critical to implement adaptation measures to minimize the impact of OA, among other key environmental stressors, as the mitigation process takes time, and the impacts of OA are already felt globally. Assessing the impacts of solutions and their potential implementations requires information at local scales, considering the variabilities in marine ecosystem responses to OA (e.g., local adaptation, species redundancies).