International conferences are often criticized as talk shops — lots of interesting discussions and impressive attendees, but a far cry from the tangible action needed to tackle existential issues like climate change and pollution. Meanwhile, multilateral processes can be long and complicated, with outcomes that can take years to take effect. For example, the High Seas Treaty, which aims to protect the nearly two-thirds of the ocean that lie beyond national borders, was 20 years in the making — and, despite being agreed to in March 2023, it has yet to come into force.
Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry founded the Our Ocean Conference (OOC) in 2014 to “focus on action, not talk.” A decade later, has it delivered?
As the new secretariat of the OOC, WRI sought to answer this question in an effort to improve the transparency and accountability of pledges. For the first time, we analyzed 10 years of OOC-related commitments from governments, companies and many others. We found that the conference has generated an impressive 2,600 commitments worth $160 billion — but there’s still more work to do.
1) Mobilizing Ocean Finance
Possibly the most impressive finding from our research is the total value of the pledges made at the OOC: $160 billion from public and private organizations, $133 billion of which has either already been delivered or is in progress.
The majority of the financial commitments — $86.8 billion — have gone toward ocean-climate projects, ranging from offshore wind and blue carbon to green shipping. Thirteen of these projects are valued at over $1 billion apiece, underscoring the growing recognition that ocean-based action can support emissions reductions while also delivering marine conservation.
However, to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14), which aims to conserve and sustainably use the ocean for sustainable development, it is estimated that $175 billion per year is needed for ocean conservation, while the overall global climate finance goal is $1.3 trillion annually.
2) Ocean Partnerships
The OOC has also spawned a wide variety of global partnerships and projects. Partnerships are key to scaling resources, coordinating action, sharing knowledge and best practices and raising global ocean ambition. For example:
- Subnational governments launched the Ocean Acidification Alliance in 2016 to address the impacts of ocean acidification on oyster hatchery production along the North American Pacific Coast. As the ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide, it is becoming more acidic, which heavily impacts marine life. Today, the alliance has expanded to over 130 members across 22 countries, delivering action to protect coastal communities and livelihoods from acidification and other climate-ocean impacts.
- Global Fishing Watch, launched in 2016, uses satellite data to spotlight where fishing activity is taking place and where it may harm vulnerable marine populations and ecosystems. It now provides a global open-ocean data platform to help governments identify and halt illegal fishing, among other things.
- The Green Shipping Challenge seeks to align the shipping sector with the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C. Related OOC announcements have included new green shipping corridors connecting ports and governments across ocean basins and public-private partnerships to reduce emissions.
3) Ocean Protection
The Our Ocean Conference aims to support the 30×30 target, the global goal to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030. In total, 42% of globally implemented Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) were first announced at the OOC, an area totaling 8.7 million square kilometers (3.4 million square miles), roughly the size of Brazil.
Small island states have led the way. Palau announced its National Marine Sanctuary at the 2015 conference, protecting an incredible 475,077 square kilometers (183,428 square miles) — 80% of its ocean territory. The Cook Islands announced its Moana reserve spanning 1.9 million square kilometers (733,594 square miles) in 2017, and Niue’s announcement at the 2022 conference established its 317,500-square-kilometers (122,587-square-miles) marine park.
Protecting 30% of the ocean will, however, require the number of MPAs to be significantly scaled up in the next five years.
What’s Next for the Our Ocean Conference?
The OOC has driven considerable progress over the last decade. But to truly help protect critical ocean ecosystems and achieve global goals, it will need to lean into a few areas over the next 10 years:
1) Mobilize action to support negotiated ocean goals and targets
With only five years remaining to meet the goals of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 30×30 target, the ocean is at a critical juncture.
Multilateral instruments such as the High Seas Treaty, the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies and the International Maritime Organization’s plan to reduce shipping emissions will be critical to achieving these goals. But they need to be backed by concrete commitments, sustained finance and ambitious policies. The OCC will be an important platform to maintain this implementation and delivery focus as the decade continues.
2) Strengthen transparency and accountability in the global ocean community
The OOC is not just about ambition — it’s about accountability. More than 65% of OOC commitments have received at least one progress update.
While that is an impressive statistic for a global platform that engages hundreds of organizations and governments, there is still progress to be made. There are also inherent challenges in assessing impact when relying on governments and organizations to provide voluntary, self-reported data. In the next 10 years, the OOC can further its commitment to transparency and accountability by improving reporting outcomes. This can include modifying the reporting framework to collect more detailed progress updates and increasing engagement with commitment-makers to encourage more accurate and timely updates.
While an estimated $24 billion has been delivered, the disbursement of $109 billion in committed funding remains in progress. The OOC can help unlock this disbursement by supporting commitment-makers with implementation, such as a convening platform to share lessons learned, best practices, successes and challenges.
3) Expand geographic and sectoral engagement
Ocean solutions work best when everyone has a seat at the table. The ocean is interconnected, and its issues are global, so it’s vital that all regions and stakeholders are represented, especially those most impacted, such as small-island developing states, whose communities and economies are intrinsically linked to the health of the ocean.
While the OOC has served as a critical incubator for cross-sector partnerships, an analysis of all commitments revealed a notable geographic skew, with the majority made by organizations and governments based in Europe and North America, and comparably very few from Africa, Latin America and South Asia. In the face of ongoing Global North-Global South divisions in the environmental policy space, it will be critical for the OOC to increase engagement with historically underrepresented regions and countries to raise overall global ambition, address their unique needs and vulnerabilities and ensure equitable implementation of ocean solutions.
Additionally, the conference can and should seek to improve engagement with non-state actors, especially the private sector and financing institutions, which have made less than 10% of all commitments. With reports indicating that $175 billion is required to finance SDG 14 per year, there is an urgent need for continued ocean finance from all sources, both public and private. Meanwhile, more inclusive engagement can ensure that the needs of young people, Indigenous groups and women are at the forefront of future conferences.
Protecting the Ocean for People, Nature and the Climate
The voluntary commitments generated through the OOC have a valuable role in the ocean policy space, complementing and strengthening the outcomes of negotiated processes and agreements. They present a more flexible tool to encourage ocean action and engagement, especially from governments, communities and organizations with limited capacity and resources.
As the planet continues to warm and communities face the devastating impacts of climate change, now is the time for even greater momentum in protecting our global ocean.