The world’s largest ecosystem is in big trouble, and time is running out to save it. Half the earth’s surface is made up of high seas – waters beyond any nation’s control – but only one per cent of these are currently protected. In what’s largely a free-for-all, industrial fishing fleets are able to strip the oceans bare, plastic pollution chokes marine life and deep-sea mining threatens ecosystems science is barely beginning to understand.

Into this crisis steps the High Seas Treaty. Agreed by states in 2023, the Agreement on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, as it’s officially called, aims to ensure responsible marine use and preserve marine biological diversity. It will enter into force 120 days after it reaches 60 ratifications.

As the United Nations (UN) Ocean Conference wraps up in Nice, France, the race is on to bring the treaty into force. Pressure for ratification from civil society and supportive states built as the conference approached. At the year’s start only 15 states had ratified, but the latest count from the High Seas Alliance, the key civil society coalition working on this issue, show the number now stands at 50. Encouragingly, 18 states ratified the treaty on the conference’s first day.

A treaty two decades in the making

The treaty’s adoption marked the culmination of years of advocacy by climate and environment organisations, Indigenous communities, youth advocacy groups and supportive states. It took almost two decades of painstaking negotiations to agree on the legally binding text, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres praising it as an historic achievement.

The action the treaty demands is desperately needed. Due to factors such as extensive shipping, industrial-scale fishing and widespread plastics pollution, the health of oceans has dramatically deteriorated. For example, as a result of large-scale fishing, dominated by a handful of countries led by China, 34 per cent of global fish stocks are overfished, which means too many are being caught for stocks to recover.

Emerging practices such as deep-sea mining threaten to cause even more damage that’s hard to quantify, because so little is still known about life at the bottom of the ocean. Despite the technology being untested, in April Donald Trump ordered the fast-tracking of permits.

Ocean degradation is a climate issue. Oceans absorb around 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. But the increasing amounts of greenhouse gases sinking into the water are causing ocean acidification, which has reached critical levels, harming a wide range of marine life. There’s also growing scientific concern about ocean darkening: over a fifth of oceans have become darker in the last two decades. This change, which may be caused by pollution, endangers the many marine species that need sunlight to thrive.

These changes in oceans are helping drive the risk of extinction that hangs over 10 to 15 per cent of sea life. The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species lists over 14,000 marine species. Ocean food webs that underpin life on land are at risk. The vast genetic wealth of the world’s oceans, much of it undocumented, could be lost, including rich sources of potentially lifesaving medicines.

The human cost is severe. Millions depend on oceans for their livelihoods, particularly in the global south. In countries such as Bangladesh, Ghana and Sri Lanka, fish provide half of people’s daily protein intake. Oceans also hold deep cultural significance for many, so their degradation brings profound cultural loss.

Governance gap

The High Seas Treaty was created to fill a major governance gap. Seas outside national jurisdiction historically haven’t been a major focus of international law. The International Maritime Organization handles shipping rules, the International Seabed Authority regulates deep-sea mining and a range of regional bodies tackle other issues. It’s clear the status quo isn’t working and business as usual won’t stop oceans dying.

The treaty aims to change that by establishing a comprehensive framework for marine conservation. It focuses on four areas: regulations to share the benefits of marine genetic resources, tools for managing and conserving marine protected areas, obligations to conduct environmental impact assessments and provisions on capacity development and the transfer of marine technology. The aspiration is that the treaty’s obligations on marine protected areas will meet the commitment made in the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework to conserve 30 per cent of seas by 2030.

The treaty should also help realise goal 14 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed by all states in 2015. Goal 14, on life below water, commits states to conserve and sustainably use oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. Progress on SDG 14 is measured by tracking data on issues such as fish stocks, marine acidity and pollution density. But implementation has been at best mixed, with regression or only marginal progress on most indicators. Overfishing continues in many regions, particularly in the Southeast Atlantic and South Pacific, while a global treaty to address plastic pollution remains unfinalised and subject to fierce dispute. Meanwhile, the failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions means ocean acidification continues apace.

Eyes on Nice

French President Emmanuel Macron was in the spotlight as France co-hosted the summit alongside Costa Rica. Macron urged states to ratify, in the hope the meeting would be the moment the treaty passed the 60-state tipping point. France is also at the forefront of global moves to ban deep-sea mining. But its high-profile role also opened up the opportunity for civil society to publicise some of the government’s shortcomings, highlighting its failure to ban the environmentally damaging practice of bottom-trawling fishing in supposedly protected areas. On this issue, France is performing worse than most European Union (EU) states.

The conference’s mix of voices – heads of state, government officials, scientists, Indigenous leaders, environmental groups and industry representatives – offered civil society opportunities to campaign and urge more ambition. Ahead of the main event, over 2,000 ocean scientists met for the One Ocean Science Congress, providing vital insights from their latest research to inform decision-making.

But not everyone could have their say. French authorities blocked the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise from entering the port of Nice, apparently in response to the organisation’s criticism of France’s failings over its marine protected areas. Greenpeace had intended to deliver a message backed by three million people calling for a deep-sea mining moratorium. The treaty’s failure to address this issue – including by exempting mining operations from environmental impact assessments – is one of civil society’s key criticisms.

Meanwhile, what should be the most vital voices in the treaty debate aren’t being heard enough. They come from Indigenous communities with long traditions of sustainably managing ocean resources. Leaders like Kaho’ohalahala from Hawaii’s Maui Nui Makai Network make the point that traditional knowledge offers crucial insights often overlooked by western conservation approaches.

The knowledge of Indigenous and coastal communities could prove invaluable in managing complex marine ecosystems, but only if they’re given a real seat at the table. Indigenous advocates are pushing for genuine involvement in the treaty’s decision-making processes – as they now have with the Global Biodiversity Framework – and not just token acknowledgement of their presence.

The ratification challenge

The summit ends with a patchwork of ratifications that shows clusters in Europe and Southeast Asia but little else. The EU has ratified as a bloc, but its member states also need to do so, and there are some big holdouts, including Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden. The EU has pledged €40 million (approx. US$46.3 million) to help African, Caribbean and Pacific states ratify.

However, these are tough times for multilateralism, with powerful states opting to play by their own rules and pursue narrow self-interest. Some major states have stayed on the fringes, including the usual suspects when it comes to rejecting binding global agreements: China, India, Russia and the USA, all states as powerful on the sea as on land. In the absence of geopolitical shifts, it’s hard to see how they might be brought into the tent.

There’s a second group, including Australia, Canada and the UK, that have more of a track record of talking up their multilateral credentials. One priority for ratification advocacy should be to bring them on board to help build momentum. The focus on marine issues brought by the conference had some impact in this regard: the Australian government pledged to place 30 per cent of its ocean under a high level of protection by 2030, while the UK government promised to ratify the treaty by the end of the year.

Now civil society must work to hold them to account on those commitments, and when the treaty comes into force, urge states to implement it – including by putting in place marine protected areas to reach the target of 30 per cent conservation by 2030. Wealthy states need to play their part in funding the treaty’s implementation, and this should be another key area for ongoing advocacy because states have a habit of signing up to climate and environmental agreements but not adequately financing them.

While states prevaricate and civil society struggles to make its voices heard, industries with vested interests in maintaining an absence of rules aren’t sitting idle. Big fishing and mining companies will continue to exploit the current fragmented system, with all the biodiversity, climate, environmental and human rights impacts this entails. The cost of inaction grows higher every day.

It’s time for states to stop treating the high seas as an asset to plunder, a dumping ground or an afterthought. Ten more ratifications are needed. Reaching that threshold should be just the start.

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