By Rémi Parmentier, Co-Director of The Varda Group, Coordinator of the Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean campaign

Sixty-four Heads of State and Government attended the UN Ocean Conference in Nice last week – on par with a climate COP but unprecedented for an ocean conference. It remains to be seen whether this heightened attention will translate into the level of action needed to overcome the threats and challenges facing the ocean. French President Emmanuel Macron’s leadership lifted the bar, but will governments walk the Nice talk?

What was at stake in Nice?

For one, the ocean is a critical buffer against climate change, absorbing some 90% of the excess heat and over 25% of carbon dioxide (CO2) we emit into the atmosphere. As Romain Troublé, Executive Director of the Tara Ocean Foundation and President of the Ocean and Climate Platform, recalls in the introduction to his recent book (Aujourd’hui l’Océan, in French), without the ocean, the average temperature on the surface of our planet would not be 15ºC but around 32ºC – making life as we know it impossible.

But the ocean is struggling, not only as a result of CO2 emissions and climate stressors, but decades of overfishing and other destructive fishing practices combined with industrial, coastal, and plastic pollution, are also taking their toll. The prospect of mining the deep seabed for critical minerals is the latest threat of many.

Protecting the ocean will increase the resilience of marine life and ocean ecosystems, critical for all life on Earth. It was therefore encouraging that President Macron used his convening power to bring together so many leaders who pledged ocean action – with the notable exception of the US, which was a no-show.

What were the results?

One outcome of the conference was a 34-paragraph document, ‘Our Ocean. Our Future: United for Urgent Action.’ The truth is that this document – negotiated in New York in the months running up to the conference – is of limited added value as it consists largely of warmed up leftovers describing the state of play of policies, actions, and commitments adopted at past conferences. More forward-looking are the Nice Commitments for the Ocean, hailed by President Macron’s Special Envoy for the Nice Conference, Ambassador Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, as “the compass, equipment, and direction” for future action, which arose from 10 Ocean Action Panels – the backbone of the Nice conference, and other initiatives showcased throughout the week.

One thing is clear. Governments have their work cut out for them. Below are some of the key challenges.

The BBNJ Agreement

One of the most tangible outcomes of the conference was securing the necessary ratifications, or commitments to ratify, to bring the high seas biodiversity agreement (BBNJ Agreement) into force most likely in early 2026. Getting any new international agreement underway in the current political environment is a remarkable achievement, but it remains to be seen how quickly and effectively governments will implement it. For example, how long will it take to designate, manage, monitor, and enforce high seas marine protected areas (MPAs), and what levels of protection will be agreed? Will the key confidence-building elements of the Agreement be put into place? Specifically, will governments make good on their promises for capacity building, transparent scientific information exchange, and the sharing of the benefits arising from the exploitation of deep sea marine genetic resources?

These are legitimate questions considering the decade-long failure of the international community to designate new MPAs in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, which is arguably the most biologically important high seas area of our planet. There are no national jurisdictions around the Antarctic continent, so under international law, these waters are part of the high seas. The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) which manages them has allowed the proliferation of industrial krill and other fishing fleets which threaten the Southern Ocean food chain, including penguins, seals, whales, and other iconic species. Governments in Nice did nothing to accelerate their protection.

Deep seabed mining

A brewing controversy over whether mining should be allowed in the deep sea threatened to boil over when US President Trump signed an executive order in May promoting deep seabed mining in both US and international waters. 

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) meets in Kingston, Jamaica, in a few weeks’ time, where governments will need to consider the growing opposition to deep-sea mining (37 governments have now called for a moratorium, citing concerns for ocean biodiversity and climate) against commercial interests involved in accessing deep-sea mineral resources.

Bottom trawling

President Macron received a lot of criticism for his support for the continuation of bottom trawling – one of the most destructive, wasteful, and non-selective fishing methods. To the dismay of scientists, environmental economists, and environmental and social justice non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Macron refused to rule out bottom trawling even in MPAs. Enhanced by recent underwater footage released as part of David Attenborough’s new Ocean documentary, this was a key demand of all ocean advocates who are now wondering when common sense will prevail.

The blue economy

Many pledges in support of a regenerative blue economy were made, driven by the Blue Economy and Finance Forum (BEFF) hosted by Monaco ahead of the Conference. Governments were reminded that many of them continue to support harmful fisheries subsidies, contradicting their SDG 14.6 commitment to end them by 2020. The call to eliminate these subsidies in 2026 national budgets was ignored. Instead, world leaders call for action by the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the umpteenth time, knowing full well that the WTO is paralyzed in the face of global trade tensions.

Incremental steps

The Nice conference saw governments progressing on the delivery of their Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s (GBF) so-called 30×30 pledge, to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030.

For example, the Government of French Polynesia, supported by philanthropist Dona Bertarelli,  announced plans to protect 23% of the waters under its jurisdiction, including a total of 1.1 million square kilometers of highly and fully protected areas, of which 900,000 square kilometers are strictly protected.

As the world moves on from Nice towards Belém for the UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 30) later this year, a decade after the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change was concluded, the Governments of Brazil and France launched the Blue NDC Challenge – calling on all countries to include ocean-specific measures in the next round of their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). From offshore renewable energy to protecting blue carbon ecosystems, the ocean offers concrete solutions to deliver on mitigation, adaptation, and resilience.

A paradigm shift for the ocean: Reversing the burden of proof

Beyond the incremental steps, the flagship proposal of the Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean initiative – which I coordinated for the last two years thanks to the support of six partner organizations, with endorsements by more than 110 different organizations – could offer an unprecedented opportunity to leave a lasting legacy for ocean protection. The idea behind the Protection Principle – making ocean protection the norm rather than the exception – is simple: the ocean belongs to all of us, and the burden of proof should thus fall to those wishing to exploit its resources to demonstrate they will not cause lasting harm. As Ambassador Poivre d’Arvor wrote in his foreword to our seminal Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean booklet published in November 2023: “if we are not nice to the ocean, the ocean will not be nicer to us.”

If you cannot prove no harm, abstain! While many stakeholders and speakers spoke to the value of such an approach, it was not formally endorsed by the conference. It’s never easy to trigger a paradigm shift, but it is the only thing that gives us a chance of saving the ocean. It was announced in Nice that in 2026, a Protection Principle Task Force will work towards developing ideas for implementing the concept in practice and report back in 2027, one year before the Fourth UN Ocean Conference.

Walking the Nice talk

France can be congratulated for elevating critical multilateral conversations within an enormously difficult geopolitical context, and elevating ocean change concerns at the Heads of State and Government level. But given the urgency to reverse the tide of destruction, more was and is needed.

As France hands the baton to Chile and the Republic of Korea who will co-chair the next UN Ocean Conference in 2028, governments must walk the Nice talk. Better yet, run.