UN Summit Urges Formal Push on High Seas Treaty as US Takes Backseat

The third UN Ocean Conference opened on June 9 with an urgent call to turn decades of promises into real protection for global marine ecosystems. According to France 24, eighteen more countries have now ratified the High Seas Treaty, bringing the total to 49. The treaty will come into force once 60 countries ratify it.

“The fight for the ocean is at the heart of the years long battles we’ve been waging — for biodiversity, for climate, for our environment and for our health,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, delivering the keynote address.

The summit underscores a growing concern, as just 2.7% of the world's oceans are effectively protected from destructive extractive activities, according to the nonprofit Marine Conservation Institute. This falls short of the “30x30” pledge to conserve 30% of land and sea by 2030.

Top agenda of the UN Summit is ratification of the High Seas Treaty which was adopted in 2023. It would, for the first time, allow countries to create marine protected areas in international waters, which cover nearly two-thirds of the ocean and are largely ungoverned.

“It’s the Wild West out there with countries just fishing anywhere without any sort of regulation, and that needs to change,” Mauro Randone, regional projects manager at the World Wildlife Fund’s Mediterranean Marine Initiative told Associated Press. “The high seas belong to everyone and no one practically at the same time, and countries are finally committing to establish some rules,” added Randone.

Experts caution that without a healthy ocean, global climate targets will remain out of reach.

US Takes a Backseat

The US has opted to send only observers to the UN Ocean Summit in France, according to Bloomberg. The report notes that this is in line with the Trump administration’s broader retreat from multilateral institutions and the fight against climate change.

Citing the State Department, the Bloomberg report said the US objects to the conference’s focus on a UN goal centered around the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans and marine resources.

This aligns with Trump's policy stance on climate change. On his inauguration day on January 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.