Nice, France

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

By Antoine AGASSE

The foghorns sounded on Friday June 13 in Nice, at the close of the UN Ocean Summit, marked by progress towards better protection of the high seas and a firmer tone on the exploitation of the abysses, threatened by Donald Trump’s plans.

With a record 64 heads of state taking part, this third UN conference on the oceans (Unoc) failed, however, to raise funds for poor countries and ignored the central issue of fossil fuels.

“Unoc reminded us that cooperation is still possible,” stressed Laurence Tubiana, architect of the Paris climate agreement. But “no communiqué has ever cooled a marine heatwave”, she warned.

– Momentum on the high seas –

The ratification of the treaty on the high seas by 50 countries, which took effect on Monday, was unanimously welcomed. Only ten countries have yet to ratify the treaty, which is designed to protect half of the planet’s international waters.

This “real global momentum” in favor of the treaty “is a decisive step for the protection of the oceans”, praised Johannes Müller, of the NGO OceanCare.

The first Conference of the Parties (COP) on the high seas could take place as early as autumn 2026, according to French ambassador for the oceans Olivier Poivre d’Arvor.

– The abyss divides –

As soon as the summit opened, the world’s leaders took a hard line against the decision by the United States (absent from Nice) to unilaterally begin mining polymetallic “nodules” in international waters.
French President Emmanuel Macron described the decision as “madness” and “predatory”, while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned against a new “Wild West”.
This unprecedented rhetoric did not result in any significant expansion of the coalition for a moratorium on seabed mining. It went from 32 to just 37 countries, out of the 169 member states of the IAMF, the UN authority responsible for setting mining rules.
“A mining code has to be approved unanimously, and with 37 countries, we’re going to block it,” said Mr. Poivre d’Arvor on Friday, a month before the next IAMF meeting in Jamaica.
– (Better) protected areas –
From Colombia to Samoa, Portugal and Greece, 14 countries have announced the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs), bringing the total to over 10% of ocean surface area, compared with 8.4% before the summit.
Others strengthened the protection of existing areas, notably by banning bottom trawling. NGOs were disappointed by the weakness of France’s announcements, which limited bottom trawling to just 4% of French waters.

We’re going to have to “race” to reach the global target of 30% protection by 2030, and create 85 new protected areas a day, warned National Geographic Society explorer Enric Sala.
– Fossil silence –
Gas, oil and coal, which are responsible for warming and acidifying the oceans, were conspicuously absent from this conference, which is nonetheless dedicated to protecting marine life.
“Ignoring the imperative to get out of offshore oil and gas is not only an injustice: it’s inadmissible”, criticized Bruna Campos, of the NGO Ciel.
The final Nice declaration, adopted on Friday, makes no mention of these carbon energies, and even less of a “transition” towards their abandonment, as at COP28 in Dubai in 2023.
“It is impossible to protect the oceans without tackling the main cause of their collapse: pollution from fossil fuels injected relentlessly into the atmosphere”, remarked former US climate envoy John Kerry, present in Nice.
– Financial gap –
Poor countries haven’t seen the 100 billion dollars in funding that Costa Rica had promised before the summit. The only commitments made, mainly by private philanthropists, were for 8.7 billion euros over five years.

“The gap is enormous. We need $175 billion (153 billion euros) a year. However, over the last five years, only 10 billion have been mobilized”, commented Li Junhua, UN Under-Secretary-General on Friday.

Humaniterre with AFP