As governments head to a major UN ocean conference next week, the race is on to get enough countries to ratify an international treaty seen as crucial to meeting a goal of protecting 30% of the world’s seas by 2030 so that it can take effect within two years of its adoption in 2023.
So far, of the 60 states needed for that to happen, only 29 have ratified the agreement, known as the High Seas Treaty but formally titled Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ). The treaty aims to create rules for establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) in international waters.
Establishing those MPAs is seen as key to conserving 30% of the world’s land and sea ecosystems by the end of this decade, as countries pledged to do at talks in Montreal in 2022. Experts say MPAs can also help oceans recover their ability to store planet-heating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the atmosphere, which has been weakening in the past two decades.
According to the UN, the world’s ocean absorbs 30% of all CO2 emissions and captures 90% of the excess heat generated by these emissions, serving as a vital buffer against the impacts of climate change. However, rising greenhouse gas emissions have affected the health of the ocean by warming and acidifying seawater – in turn harming biodiversity and and reducing the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2.
Back when the High Seas Treaty was adopted, countries set a political target for it to enter into force within two years, in time for the third UN Ocean Conference (UNOC), which begins on June 9.
As the number of new ratifications has picked up pace in recent months, experts said they hope the UN conference in the French city of Nice can provide momentum to achieve the 60 countries required. Once that threshold has been reached, the treaty will enter into force 120 days later.
“I’ll be realistic and not say that we’ll definitely get there at UNOC – but I think we’ll certainly get some of the way,” Angelique Pouponneau, advisor to the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), told journalists. “With the UN General Assembly just a few months later, I think it looks very promising.”
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Islands among early adopters
The first movers that have already ratified the treaty include small island states like Palau and Seychelles, both co-chairs of a high-ambition coalition for the agreement, as well as six EU member countries including France, Portugal and Spain. Another 87 states have signed up to the treaty without ratifying it in national legislation, meaning they are not bound by it.
Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, a coalition of campaign groups following the treaty process, said that “many governments are going through last-minute efforts for parliamentary approvals or cabinet and ministry approvals”, adding that she hoped up to 20 new ratifications would be announced in the coming days.
The High Seas Treaty, once in effect, would provide a legal path for establishing Marine Protected Areas, as well as requiring environmental impact assessments for economic activities in international waters. But deep-sea mining for minerals – which scientists fear could significantly impact the ocean floor and its ecosystems – is exempt because it is already regulated separately by the International Seabed Authority.
A 2024 report by a group of NGOs and funders shows that currently about 8% of the ocean is covered by some level of protection, but only 2.8% is “effectively” protected, meaning there are rules and controls in place to prevent harmful activities.
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“Weak” declaration
At the upcoming UN Ocean Conference, countries are set to adopt a political declaration which calls on governments to step up their efforts to “defend ocean ecosystems”. The declaration also “encourages” countries to ratify the High Seas Treaty.
But campaign groups have criticised it as tame on a number of issues, including a lack of urgency in calling for treaty ratification, “pitifully weak” language on deep-sea mining and scant new financial commitments.
“The UN Ocean Conference was supposed to be the moment when governments turned the tide, and showcased genuine progress,” said Megan Randles, Greenpeace’s head of delegation for UNOC. “Instead, we are handed a weak political declaration with glaring omissions.”
On finance, the declaration recognises the role of “blue bonds” – debt instruments allowing governments to raise funds for marine projects – and also calls for accelerating blended finance and private finance towards ocean conservation. But it falls short of setting specific financial targets.
A new report launched this week by a coalition of nature NGOs and funders – among them Bloomberg Ocean Fund, Campaign for Nature and WWF – warns that, while $1.2 billion a year currently flows to ocean protection efforts, actual needs reach $15.8 billion annually.
Stronger links with climate action
The UNOC declaration also avoids any mention of the role of fossil fuels in driving climate change, and does not include an existing global commitment, made at UN climate talks, to “transition away” from fossil fuels in energy systems, which campaigners have urged for.
The World Resources Institute, a US-based think-tank, has also urged countries to use the Nice conference to commit to including ocean-based measures to cut emissions and adapt to a warmer world in their next round of national climate plans (NDCs) due this year.
So far such measures have been largely absent from the NDCs, WRI said this week, calling on UNOC to send a clear message to November’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil around the need to change this if global climate goals are to be met.
WRI cited research from the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy showing that ocean-based climate solutions – including offshore renewable energy, sustainable shipping, and protection and restoration of “blue carbon” ecosystems like mangroves and seagrass – could deliver up to 35% of the emissions reductions needed by 2050 to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C.
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Treaty to protect seas short on support ahead of UN ocean conference
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New data on international climate finance for 2023 and 2024 suggests that wealthy countries are highly unlikely to have met their pledge to double funding for adaptation in developing nations to around $40 billion a year by 2025 amid cuts to their overseas aid budgets.
At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, all countries agreed to “urge” developed nations to at least double their funding for adaptation in developing countries from 2019 levels of around $20 billion by 2025. Funding for adaptation has lagged behind money to help reduce emissions and remains the dark spot even as the data showed overall climate finance rose to a record $136.7 billion in 2024.
A United Nations Environment Programme report warned last year that wealthy nations were likely to miss the adaptation finance target and the data released on Thursday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that in 2024 adaptation finance was just under $35 billion.
The OECD, an intergovernmental policy forum for wealthy countries, said the increase between 2022 and 2024 was “modest”, adding that meeting the doubling target would require “strong growth” of close to 20% in 2025.
More cuts likely
The OECD’s figures do not go up to 2025, but several nations announced cuts to climate finance last year. The most notable was the abandonment of US pledges to international climate funds by the new Trump administration but the UK, France, Germany and other wealthy European countries also pared back their contributions.
Joe Thwaites, international finance director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said developed countries were “not on track” to meet the adaptation funding goal.
Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow said adaptation finance is needed to expand flood defences, drought-resistant crops, early warning systems and resilient health services as the world warms, bringing more extreme weather and rising seas. “When that money fails to arrive, people lose homes, harvests and livelihoods – and in the worst cases, their lives,” he warned.
Imane Saidi, a senior researcher at the North Africa-based Imal Initiative, called the $35 billion in adaptation finance in 2024 “a drop in the ocean”, considering that the United Nations estimates the annual adaptation needs of developing countries at between $215 billion and $387 billion.
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If confirmed, a failure to meet the goal is likely to further strain relations between developed and developing countries within the UN climate process. A previous pledge to provide $100 billion a year of total climate finance by 2020 was only met two years late, a failure labelled “dismal” by the UAE’s COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber and many other Global South diplomats.
Missing that goal would also raise doubts about donor governments’ commitment to meeting their new post-2025 adaptation finance goal. At COP30 last year, governments agreed to urge developed countries to triple adaptation finance – without defining the baseline – by 2035.
African and other developing countries have pointed to lack of funding as a key flaw in ongoing attempts to set indicators to measure progress on adapting to climate change.
Speaking to climate ministers from around the world in Copenhagen on Wednesday, Turkish COP31 President Murat Kurum stressed the importance of climate finance. “It is easy to say we support global climate action,” he said, “but promises must be kept.”
He said the COP31 Presidency will use the new Global Implementation Accelerator and recommendations in the Baku-to-Belem roadmap, published last year, to scale up climate finance – and will hold donors accountable for their collective finance goals.
He noted that developed countries should this year submit their first reports showing how they will deliver their “fair share” of the new broader finance goal set at COP29 in 2024, to deliver $300 billion a year in climate finance by 2035. They are due to report on this once every two years.
Broader climate finance
The OECD data shows that the overall amount of climate finance – including funding for emissions cuts – provided by developed countries grew fast in 2023 before declining in 2024. In contrast, the amount of private finance developed countries say they “mobilised” increased in both 2023 and 2024, pushing the top-line figure to a record high.
While the OECD does not say which countries provided what amounts, data from the ODI Global think-tank suggests that the 2024 cuts to bilateral climate finance were spread broadly among wealthy nations.
Thwaites of NRDC welcomed the fact that overall climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries exceeded $130 billion in both 2023 and 2024. He said that this was “well above earlier projections” and “shows that when rich countries work together, they can over-achieve on climate finance goals”.
But Sehr Raheja, programme officer at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said these figures are “modest” when set against the new $300-billion goal.
“While the headline total figure of climate finance remains alright,” she said, “declining bilateral climate spending raises important questions about the predictability of high-quality, concessional public finance, which has consistently been a key demand of the Global South.”
She also lamented that loans continue to dominate public climate finance and that mobilised private finance is concentrated in middle-income countries and on emissions-reduction measures rather than adaptation projects. “Private capital continues to follow bankability rather than climate vulnerability or need,” she added.
Ritu Bharadwaj, climate finance and resilience researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said the figures painted an outdated picture as climate finance has since declined as rich countries shrink their overseas aid budgets and increase spending on defence.
Last month, the OECD published figures showing that international aid – which includes climate finance – fell by nearly a quarter in 2025. The US was responsible for three-quarters of this decline. The OECD projects a further decline in 2026.
With Thursday’s climate finance report, the OECD is “publishing a victory lap for 2023 and 2024 at almost the same moment its own aid statistics show the funding base eroding underneath it,” Bharadwaj said.
The post New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance appeared first on Climate Home News.
New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance
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