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Port of Nice, France, during the United Nations Oceans Conference in June 2025.
High time for the high seas: Q+A with Rebecca Hubbard
Amid a rising tide of concerns about the temperature, level, and even the color of the world’s oceans, the third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) gathered in Nice, France, last weekend to try to address some of the challenges. The principal topic was the High Seas Treaty: dubbed the “Paris Agreement for the ocean,” the pact aims to boost conservation efforts in areas outside of national jurisdictions, which accounts nearly half of the planet’s surface.
To learn more about this critical treaty, Eurasia Group’s biodiversity and sustainability analyst María José Valverde sat down with Rebecca Hubbard, the director of the High Seas Alliance. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
María José Valverde: How have you seen the marine sector evolve since the first UN Ocean Conference?
Rebecca Hubbard: The ocean sector has made significant progress since the first UNOC, especially in public and political awareness. Interest in ocean conservation has grown, particularly regarding the high seas, which were historically viewed as a secondary issue because we don’t live in them. Governments are also looking at it through the frame of the blue economy and increasingly understand the importance of sustainable resource management, including the role oceans play in absorbing heat and carbon dioxide. There’s also been greater political will to act, supported by countless civil society organizations and initiatives like the UN Decade of Ocean Science. And in that process, the High Seas Treaty came to fruition, which marks a landmark change in how we govern the high seas, which cover half of the planet. That’s no small feat.
This is the first ocean conference with the Global Biodiversity Framework and the 30x30 marine target in place. How does that affect your work when engaging countries or sectors?
The adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – including the goal to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030 – has made a big difference. It’s absolutely critical for the high seas; the areas beyond national jurisdiction cover around two-thirds of the ocean and we will not be able to reach the 30% target if we do not protect the high seas.
Given the challenges of coordinating across borders and institutional frameworks, do you expect practical difficulties in implementing and achieving agreement under the High Seas Treaty?
Implementation is always more challenging than making commitments, but we’ve built substantial political momentum. When it comes to doing any of these conservation tasks, it’s really about leaders and governments feeling ownership and understanding the value, and many countries have gone to great lengths to ratify and prepare for implementation, despite the complex processes of legislation, consultation, and educating their ministries and departments.
Even with current geopolitical tensions, there’s a genuine appetite for multilateralism because countries realize global challenges demand collaboration. We’ve already seen strong regional cooperation in places like Asia-Pacific and Latin America, where countries support one another in understanding how to implement the Treaty. It won’t be simple, but there is real hope and determination to achieve something globally significant.
Are there regions or countries that stand out as leaders in supporting the ratification and implementation process?
We’ve seen leadership come from across all regions, which is very encouraging. In the Pacific, developing, small-island states have renamed themselves the “big ocean states,” and have remained ocean and climate champions. Palau specifically was the first one to ratify the treaty, and we’ve got a number of others that have also ratified it, all working together to pursue ratification as a region. Costa Rica and France, as co-hosts of the UNOC, have made Treaty ratification a core goal, leveraging diplomatic networks to encourage others. The Philippines has been a regional leader in Asia, hosting capacity-building workshops for other Southeast Asian countries, even though domestic politics have slowed their own ratification. Nigeria has emerged as a leader in Africa – they were not the first to ratify the treaty, but they have provided a lot of support and encouragement to other countries. Finally, the preparatory meetings to establish institutional processes for the Treaty have shown strong engagement and consensus-building, which is very promising for future implementation.
What are the main barriers to the approval of the High Seas Treaty?
A significant barrier is the lack of understanding. Our efforts are focused on raising awareness among countries, especially within their ministries, about how activities in the high seas affect their national waters. Species and ecosystems are interconnected, and actions in the high seas can undermine national conservation efforts if not properly managed. Specifically for landlocked countries, of which there are over 40, discussions focus on the ocean's role in climate systems and water cycles. There is potential there for capacity building, marine technology transfer, and marine genetic resource finance. High seas research can bolster national science and tech sectors, as accessing this data is typically cost-prohibitive for individual countries.
What’s next for the High Seas Alliance once the Treaty is ratified? What are your immediate objectives?
Ratification feels like the end, but it’s really just the beginning. Our goal is to get at least 60 countries to ratify – hopefully by UNOC, or very shortly thereafter – so that the Treaty can enter into force. Then we’ll push for universal ratification and support countries in building the institutions and processes that make the Treaty functional, inclusive, and efficient. We’ve already started working on implementation; we did a science symposium in Australia on the Lord Howe and Tasman Sea region, and some workshops in the Walvis Ridge, which is off the coast of Africa.
What inspired you to devote your career to ocean conservation?
I’ve always loved the ocean. I was very fortunate to grow up in Australia, spending much of my childhood at the beach thanks to my dad, who was a surfer. I grew up with love, fear and respect for the ocean – and the fact that we’ve done so much damage to it, not valued how it’s the source of all life on the planet, and how little effort we put into it to care for it made me decide that this is what I needed to work on. I have now worked on ocean conservation for 20 years.
The High Seas Treaty, for me, represents the single biggest step we can take for global conservation, given the central role of the ocean in supporting life. It’s also a source of inspiration; more people should focus on the spiritual benefits that we get from nature and from the ocean, instead of reducing them to their scientific or economic value.Flags hung at the reconvening of the COP16 conference in Rome last month, with an inset image of Adrian Gahan, the ocean lead for Campaign for Nature.
What happened at the UN Biodiversity Summit in Rome, and what comes next?
Countries gathered in Rome in late February to finalize key decisions left unresolved after last year’s COP16 summit in Colombia. In Italy, negotiators agreed to the first global deal for finance conservation, which aims to achieve the landmark goal of protecting and restoring 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030. Eurasia Group’s María José Valverde interviewed Adrian Gahan, the ocean lead for Campaign for Nature, a global campaign founded in 2018 to secure the 30x30 target, as we look ahead to the UN ocean conference and continue building on the nature agenda for 2025.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
María José Valverde: What are your expectations for the achievement of the 30x30 goal in the marine space, keeping all upcoming UN environmental processes (biodiversity, plastics, ocean, climate) in mind?
Adrian Gahan: This is an important year because we’re only five years away from the 2030 target. And the reality is that we're not making progress at the pace that we should. Something really important that can happen this year is the ratification of the High Seas Treaty. Whilst it’s been agreed, it needs to be ratified by at least 60 countries before it comes into legal effect, and at the moment, we’re at 17 countries. We should aim to get those remaining 43 countries in 2025, and we need to do it before Q4 for the treaty to come into legal effect this year. This would represent a significant step forward, and it'd be great if going into COP30 in Brazil we’re already counting down the ticker on the treaty taking legal effect.
Could you explain why this High Seas Treaty is so important?
Before this treaty was agreed in 2022, there was no legal instrument to manage biodiversity on the high seas, areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) 200 nautical miles off of a country’s coast. Instead, you had a patchwork of preexisting organizations — the International Whaling Commission, which is species-specific, and the International Seabed Authority, which covers the seabed but doesn't regulate the water column above the seabed. But they couldn’t establish marine protected areas covering the whole water column or all flora and fauna within it because they didn't have the legal capacity to do that. The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, or BBNJ, will allow countries to agree on setting parts of the international waters aside for nature in the context of all of these pre-existing organizations. And that is an innovation.
The high seas treaty could impact interests in critical minerals, deep sea mining, and those benefitting from marine genetic materials. The recently launched Cali Fund could also be a financial instrument for BBNJ areas. What are your thoughts on its potential implications?
This is one of the reasons why it’s taking countries a long time to ratify this treaty. They need to figure out what are the benefit-sharing mechanisms, what are the legal and financial instruments involved, etc. A lot of it has to be discovered as we go along. My headline observation around digital sequence information and the Cali Fund is that if it’s going to be meaningful, it has to be a regulatory requirement. That also needs to apply to BBNJ areas, which obviously have more complexity to it by definition because it’s beyond the territorial boundaries of any of these countries. But to be effective, it needs to be legally binding.
What’s at stake if we don't reach an agreement on finance at COP16.2, and what are the best- and worst-case scenarios for the marine sector?
The money is very important as part of the biodiversity COP process, not just because of the funding, but also because it’s a currency of seriousness. If we are asking the Global South to protect some of the last great wild places in the world that are providing vital infrastructure to the whole planet, then we need to be prepared to pay for it. This is not about charity – nor should it be considered aid. Donor countries need to show seriousness on this, and finance is one of the ways to do that.
It’s also important to consider our political context. Given budget and geopolitical constraints in the Global North, we need to continuously make the case as to why this is important. It is not just because nature is beautiful and special. We’re protecting it because it provides us all with an essential service, and this is an extension of our national security budget. We need to keep making that case. We also need to keep making the case that the private sector, which is making a lot of money and continuing to drop significant externalities onto this infrastructure, needs to pay its way. That’s an example of where governments need to intervene more in the market: tax and regulate.
The plastics negotiations have a lot of interlinkages with the biodiversity talks because of the Global Biodiversity Framework’s (GBF) Target 7 on pollution. Do you see any implications from the UN plastics treaty negotiations on your work?
We focus more on spatial targets and protection because the biggest threat to the global ocean, other than climate change, is not plastics, it’s overfishing. This is really worth reminding people. Plastics and pollution are very serious, but overfishing is a bigger threat. The crisis of overfishing is an absence of something, which is a harder narrative to sell than showing people an ocean full of plastic. The risk of the plastics narrative is that people think using paper straws means the crisis is solved. But, the ocean is facing so many more threats than plastic straws. However, the issue can be an important way to introduce people to the crises of climate change, coral bleaching, ocean acidification, and invasive species.
My final point on that is that the single biggest polluter of plastic in the ocean is not PepsiCo or Coca-Cola — it’s the global fishing industry. The single biggest source of plastic in the ocean is discarded fishing nets known as ghost gear. It doesn’t biodegrade, it’s hugely destructive, and it’s very helpful to the global fishing industry if everyone obsesses about plastic straws and bottles instead.
Conversations around fishing are tricky because they become a discussion about livelihoods and food security. How do you navigate these difficult issues?
It’s much easier to campaign against Coca-Cola than it is to campaign against local fishermen dropping their nets in the ocean. However, the most destructive fishing is conducted by very large and wealthy industrial fishing vessels, almost all owned by rich countries from Europe and Asia, not by local small-scale fishers. That said, there also needs to be training and engagement at the local level, which is difficult and time-consuming. One answer is to set parts of the ocean aside where you state there’s no fishing, and that makes it a lot easier to regulate. This requires government intervention and financial support for fishers who need to, for example, change their gear types or face a reduced catch for a short period while the spillover effect takes place. It becomes very complicated, and that’s why we’re making very slow progress toward the 30x30 goal.
One of the things we’ve been paying attention to is the nature tech market. What are some concrete examples of nature tech in the marine sector, and what role is the private sector playing?
I think it’s a really positive story. One of the most important, disruptive technologies that has helped in establishing and enforcing marine protected areas is satellite technology. I've been working for years on a UK program called Blue Belt. We work with local communities that are concerned about illegal fishing coming into their waters and far too remote to have their own enforcement capacity. The UK Government runs the satellite monitoring programs and then provides them with the intel. They can tag any suspicious activity and pursue the vessel legally through the Port State Measures Agreement. It’s a legal process where, if one of these vessels fishes illegally in these protected areas and then pulls into a port to offload the fish, the port state can take legal measures against the vessel, even though the vessel didn’t break any laws in that port state. This has been a very effective tool for protecting these areas.
This would not have been possible probably 15 years ago. That’s a really positive tech story to tell and something people should take some hope from because presumably this technology will only continue to improve and get more affordable. Bad news can be very overwhelming for people. So I think it’s good to remind people that good people are doing good things in the world.
María José (Majo) Valverde is a global sustainability analyst at Eurasia Group.
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