2025 United Nations Ocean Conference Preparatory Meeting Recap
July 2, 2024 at UNHQ
As the international community prepares every possible play on the word “nice”, Costa Rica and France prepare to host the 2025 UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France in June 2025. This conference will assess progress toward fulfilling Sustainable Development Goal 14, “Life Below Water” (SDG14). At today’s one-day preparatory meeting at United Nations Headquarters in New York, delegates acknowledged the threats that the ocean continues to face while praising the progress that has been made since the last UN Ocean Conference in 2022 in Lisbon, Portugal. They drew hope from the ongoing international plastics treaty negotiations (to be finalized in the Republic of Korea later this year) and the WTO talks to end harmful fishing subsidies. They praised the finalizing of the Agreement under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (“BBNJ Agreement”), while encouraging the requisite 60 nations to ratify it before the June conference.
The preparatory meeting had two primary objectives: to determine the topics for the thematic panels at the June 2025 conference, and to begin conversation around the contents of the political declaration that that conference will produce. Many speakers, including the Ambassador from Costa Rica serving as co-chair, emphasized the need for meaningful incorporation of gender equality and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) across all conference panels and outcomes. Many delegates requested that plastics and other pollution originating from the land be explicitly named in the panel themes. Several lamented the fact that SDG14 is still the most underfunded of all of the SDGs, and called for greater investment in ocean health measures in order to meet this goal. Ocean literacy was added to the panels after taking into account the contributions of civil society stakeholders. Debate arose over the question of whether to refer to the ocean as singular or plural, and how to phrase which international laws would be under discussion. Delegates called for either an ambitious political declaration with measurable goals and timelines, or for a declaration that avoided “contentious issues” or replicating topics covered by other UN mechanisms. This careful sidestepping of important but “contentious” issues threaten to leave climate change, biodiversity loss, and the threat to both posed by deep sea mining out of the conversation.
Deep sea mining was given far too little attention by the proceedings overall. It was entirely absent from the morning session, apart from a brief call for a moratorium issued during an intervention given by Oceano Azul Foundation. (The UN Environment Programme mentioned the need to “establish guardrails” around deep sea mining, but this phrase is too permissively vague to be useful.) During the afternoon session, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) echoed the call for a moratorium while the delegate from Japan clearly articulated their opposition such a protective measure. Given the immense pressure to pass a moratorium on deep sea mining that came from a coalition of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and civil society at the 2022 conference, its near absence from these proceedings was glaring. The pressure in 2022 brought France on board the call for a moratorium, amplifying the movement. Given the International Seabed Authority (ISA) regulatory meetings that will be happening later this month, the conference participants missed an opportunity to draw more attention to this critical ocean issue. Deep sea mining was entirely absent from the conference summary that the co-chairs gave at the meeting’s conclusion.
The final wording of the thematic panels should be made available within a week. As the conference draws nearer, the conference organizers will open opportunities for stakeholders to submit voluntary commitments to fulfill SDG 14. Civil society is already getting organized behind a number of coalitions, including the “Let’s Be Nice To The Ocean” movement. (Waterspirit and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace are involved via our sign-on to Rise Up For The Ocean.) More information is available on the conference website: https://sdgs.un.org/conferences/ocean2025
Submitted by Blair Nelsen
Executive Director, Waterspirit
UN-NGO Representative, Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace
Member: NGO Mining Working Group
Member: Faiths for Biodiversity
Member: CRNGO Climate Working Group