In a call to action that highlights the urgency of marine conservation, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pressed world leaders to adopt strategies that protect the world’s oceans at the third UN Ocean Conference (UNOC3). Guterres emphasized the importance of changing harmful practices and introducing sustainable policies to ensure the long-term health of marine ecosystems and biodiversity.
During the conference in Nice, France, the Secretary-General encouraged governments to focus on alternatives that better promote the sustainable use of marine resources. Highlighting the ocean’s role in producing half of the oxygen we breathe and feeding 3 billion people, he noted the dire consequences of neglecting this shared resource. “The ocean is the ultimate shared resource. But we are failing it,” Guterres warned, underscoring the detrimental impact of human activity on ocean health.
Amid growing concerns over overfishing, plastic pollution, and seabed mining, Guterres pointed to the troubling interconnection between marine degradation and climate change. He reiterated the necessity for multilateral efforts to address the issues of ocean acidification and coral reef degradation, which severely affect marine ecosystems and the communities reliant on them.
The goals of UNOC3 involve advancing the commitments of the High Seas Treaty’s “30 by 30” pledge: sustainable fisheries, decarbonizing maritime transport, and bolstering blue finance. Despite its critical importance, Sustainable Development Goal 14, focusing on ocean conservation, remains the least funded among the United Nations’ global goals. Guterres emphasized the need to redirect funding towards conservation and ocean-dependent community welfare activities.
Additionally, the conference participants, including leading political figures from the European Commission, Brazil, France, and Costa Rica, universally backed Guterres’s initiative to ratify the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ). This treaty, requiring 60 ratifications to become binding, is pivotal to global environmental law and highlights the necessity of a unified global policy on marine biological diversity.
The UNOC3 is expected to produce significant outcomes such as finalizing a treaty on plastic pollution and achieving an agreement on fisheries subsidies, aiming to solidify international commitments through the adoption of the Nice Ocean Action Plan.