The world just got closer to an ocean-saving treaty

NICE, France — The race to save the world’s oceans is on.

The United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice, France ended Friday with promises from world leaders to ratify a global, binding agreement to help protect the world’s oceans by September — paving the way for the world’s very first Conference of the Parties for a High Seas Treaty next year.

“This is a considerable victory,” said French Oceans Ambassador Olivier Poivre d’Arvor in a press conference Friday. “It’s very difficult to work on oceans right now when the United States have withdrawn from almost everything. But the Argentinian president helped a lot. China [promised to ratify]. Indonesia just ratified a few hours ago. So, we won.”

If that happens, it will have been a long time coming. The negotiating process started 20 years ago and the treaty was adopted in 2023, but countries have been slow to ratify and at least 60 must do so for the treaty to come into force. With marine and coastal ecosystems facing multiple threats from climate change, fishing, and pollution, the treaty’s main aim is to establish marine protected areas in international waters, which make up around two thirds of the ocean.

But if getting 60 countries to ratify a treaty they already endorsed was hard, deciding which parts of the world’s international waters to protect from overfishing — and how — won’t be much easier.

“Make no mistake, like every other convention, there will be opposition,” Dale Webber, Jamaica’s special envoy for climate change, environment, ocean and blue economy, told POLITICO. “I already know of some countries who are fishing on the high seas who are saying, ‘You’re trying to limit my catch!’ but that’s exactly what we need to do.”

Off to a slow start

Some smaller and developing countries, as well as environmental groups, leave the conference feeling that the onus remains on them to protect the world’s oceans — despite grand words from French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the conference’s opening on Monday.

“Everybody needs to do more — specifically those countries that belong to the Western world,” Panamanian climate envoy Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez told POLITICO. “If you look at the 30 by 30 goal, it’s developing countries [who are] carrying the weight as of right now,” he added, in reference to a global goal to protect at least 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030.

French Polynesia stole the show this week, announcing the creation of the world’s largest Marine Protected Area, highly or fully protecting around 1.1 million square kilometers of its waters, teeming with tropical fish, sharks, rays, dolphins and 150 species of precious corals.  

Other non-EU countries to have presented new marine protected areas include Colombia, Samoa, Tanzania and São Tomé and Príncipe.

In comparison, the offering from the EU and other Western countries seems paltry to NGOs. “The legacy of EU countries at this conference on ocean protection can be summed up as: ‘Do as I say, not as I do’,” said Seas at Risk policy officer Tatiana Nuño. 

While Marine Protected Areas cover just over 12 percent of EU sea area, only 2 percent have management plans in place and less than 1 percent are strictly protected, according to the European Environment Agency.

Portuguese environment minister Maria da Graça Carvalho pledged to establish a Marine Protected Area around the Gorringe Ridge in the Atlantic Ocean, which features Western Europe’s tallest seamount and is over 180 kilometers long — although details around how it would be managed remain scarce. France announced fresh limits on bottom trawling in Marine Protected Areas — but faced criticism from NGOs denouncing a lack of ambition. Greece declared it had begun legal procedures for the creation of Greece’s first two marine parks.

The U.S. was a no-show, having decided to skip the conference, as reported by POLITICO last week. A State Department spokesperson said the conference is “at odds” with positions held by the current U.S. administration.

“We can do this,” said the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, Peter Thomson. “Small countries are leading the way. Come on, big countries, make 30 by 30 a reality,” he added.

“The EU can do a lot more,” in terms of ocean protection and MPAs, Webber, the Jamaican envoy said. “We’re up to 15 percent in Jamaica, and for all our Marine Protected Areas, we have a management plan.”

Portugal’s Carvalho told POLITICO she hoped her country’s own MPA announcement would serve as an “example” to other EU countries.

A tug-of-war looms

The discrepancy in ambition foreshadows the hurdles of implementing the high seas treaty.

Governments are set to squabble over where to put new Marine Protected Areas in international waters and how they should be managed — as well as how they should be financed. Monitoring these vast, remote waters will be difficult and costly.

It turns out that rescuing that world’s oceans doesn’t come cheap.

The world needs to invest $15.8 billion annually to achieve a global target of protecting 30 per cent of the global oceans by 2030, according to a new report penned by Systemiq. Currently, annual investment in ocean protection amounts to $1.2 billion, leaving a $14.6 billion funding gap.

“We also have considerable concerns about how [the funding commitments so far] translate onto the ground,” said Kristian Teleki, CEO of NGO Fauna & Flora. “The frontline where communities are the ones bearing the brunt of ocean decline but equally are the solution for reversing this trend.”

One thing is for certain: Countries won’t be able to count on the U.S. for the foreseeable future.

The summit aims to promote enduring uses of ocean resources — one of 17 sustainable development goals held by the United Nations. But the Trump administration has rejected those goals, calling them “inconsistent with U.S. sovereignty.”

While it’s “sad that they have taken this decision,” said Jamaica’s Webber, “they’re just one country. An important country, a large country — but still one country.”

In addition to the high seas treaty, countries have also rallied around a call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, with the current number of signatories standing at 37 — standing in opposition to the U.S. which has signed an executive order promoting deep-sea mining in national and international waters.

“While the usual virtue signaling floats on the breeze at UNOC in the French Riviera, we’ve had a GREAT week in D.C. where things get done and the sun shines bright,” posted The Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron on social media network X.

“The deep sea is the heritage of humankind, and one nation cannot make a unilateral decision to destroy it to the detriment of other nations,” said Panama’s Monterrey.

The next United Nations Oceans Conference is set to take place in South Korea in 2028.