At the start of 2025, several major opportunities that could reshape international ocean governance were on the horizon. From major treaties decades in the making to important conferences and global events, 2025 was poised to be a crucial year for the ocean and those that depend on it.

Now, as what many in the international ocean community dubbed as a “super year” draws to a close, we can assess how much progress has truly been made toward building a sustainable ocean economy and identify where critical gaps in action remain.

Tom Pickerell, the global director of WRI's Ocean Program, answers six pivotal questions that highlight a year filled with global cooperation and crucial progress on a number of important issues.

1) Progress for Protecting the High Seas

Has the momentum behind the High Seas Treaty translated into meaningful progress in 2025?

Twenty years in the making, the High Seas Treaty sets out to legally protect — for the first time — the mostly unregulated ocean areas that lie beyond countries’ individual jurisdictions, known as the high seas. Progress toward ratification had been slow in the first part of the year, but was given at boost during the June UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, when 19 countries ratified the treaty. By September, it had formally crossed the ratification finish line, marking a historic milestone for global ocean governance.

While this win represents a significant step forward, the real test now lies in implementation. Key capacity-building components including designating decision-making bodies, identifying scientific advisory structures and supporting financing mechanisms must still be arranged.

This will mean further challenges as we now head toward the first High Seas first Conference of Parties (COP) in 2026. But effective management of the high seas will depend on whether countries can translate the now-ratified treaty into concrete, coordinated action.

2) Fighting Overfishing and Illegal Practices

Is the world closer to eliminating overfishing and illegal practices?

Good news came in September, when a decisive breakthrough for the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies (known as “Fish 1”) officially entered into force after achieving the required ratification by two-thirds of WTO members. Similar to the High Seas Treaty, this agreement also took nearly two decades of negotiations.

The agreement aims to curb some of the most damaging forms of government support to the fishing sector, including subsidies linked to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, subsidies targeting overfished stocks (unless recovery measures are in place) and subsidies contributing to unregulated high-seas fishing.

This development reflects renewed global commitment to addressing the drivers of overfishing.

However, this is only a first step in the right direction. Negotiations on the second phase of the agreement (known as “Fish 2”) are aimed at addressing broader capacity-enhancing subsidies, that contribute to overfishing, such as fuel subsidies or vessel modernization, remain underway. For the WTO framework to deliver meaningful ecological and social outcomes, members will need to swiftly conclude Fish 2 and avoid another prolonged negotiation cycle.

3) Finding Solutions on Plastic Pollution

What is being done to tackle plastic pollution?

In short, we are no closer to having a Global Plastics Treaty in 2025. While negotiators made incremental progress, narrowing in on differences between core elements such as production controls, “chemicals of concern” (chemicals that have negative impacts on human health ), product design standards and waste-management obligations, negotiations remain divided between countries. The key sticking point appears to be disagreement between countries that want to curb plastic production and those that favor “downstream” solutions — dealing with waste once a product has already been discarded.

Plastic waste builds up on a shoreline in Vietnam.
Plastic waste from fishing activities clutters on the shoreline in Vietnam. In 2025, countries were unable to agree on text for a global treaty that would have helped to prevent the buildup of plastic pollution. Photo by Zigmunds Dizgalvis/iStock.

Ultimately, negotiations this year ended without a finalized treaty text. Key petrostates and plastic producers were the most vocal in excluding measures that would have implications for plastic suppliers. While the architecture of a global agreement is beginning to take shape, significant gaps remain on ambition, scope and legally binding obligations.

Negotiations will continue in 2026, but success will require strong leadership from major economies and alignment around measurable targets to reduce plastic pollution across the full life cycle.

4) Clarity for Deep-Sea Mining

Did 2025 clarify whether deep-sea mining will proceed or be constrained under global rules?

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) was due to finalize a mining code this year, which set out how commercial deep-sea mining could be conducted. However, member states couldn’t reach consensus on the environmental, financial and liability provisions needed to authorize commercial activity.

Many countries continued to voice their support for precautionary approaches or pauses, citing unresolved scientific uncertainties and insufficient baseline data on deep-sea ecosystems. However, others continued to press for a regulatory pathway that would enable future mining applications. By the negotiations end, no mining code had been adopted, and the ISA maintained its dual-track approach of negotiating regulations while considering potential exploitation applications.

Notably, these negotiations were undermined by the United States’ position to accelerate deep-sea mining by fast-tracking permits for both the U.S. and international waters. Since the U.S. has not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, under which the ISA sits, the U.S. is not an ISA member and is not bound by its processes.

While the world has greater clarity on political alignments, it still awaits resolution on whether, when, or under what conditions deep-sea mining might proceed.

5) Global Cooperation on Ocean Action

How are countries working together to deliver ambitious ocean action?

The way the ocean is managed must be as interconnected as the ocean itself, which is why collaboration is so critical. In 2025, 11 new countries committed to 100% sustainable ocean management of their national waters, safeguarding over 6 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles) of ocean. This means that these nations agree to develop and implement a Sustainable Ocean Plan which will guide the protection and sustainable use of their national waters. This came via a range of pathways:

Now nearly 40% of the world’s Exclusive Economic Zones (a country’s national waters which can extend up to 200 nautical miles from its coastline), are under formal commitments to achieve 100% sustainable ocean management.

Another collaborative effort on the ocean emerged in 2025: The European Union adopted its European Ocean Pact, which marks a major step toward integrated ocean governance, unifying EU policies on ocean health, sustainable ocean economy development, science–policy coordination and international cooperation across the world’s largest collective maritime area.

The priority now is delivery — if the EU accelerates implementation of holistic management methods such as national Sustainable Ocean Plans and strengthens financing mechanisms, the Pact can move from an ambitious blueprint to a meaningful driver of global ocean progress. This progress will be embodied within the EU Ocean Act, currently slated for 2027, and which will ideally solidify the Pact’s commitments into binding law to help the world address the global climate, biodiversity and food security crises.

6) Advancing Ocean Action

Did the major ocean and climate events of 2025 push global ocean action forward in a meaningful way?

From the Our Ocean Conference (OOC) in Busan, South Korea, and the UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice, France, to the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi, and the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém,  Brazil, this year’s events collectively raised political attention to the ocean — but they also highlighted the urgent need for better financing mechanisms and stronger ambition across the ocean-climate agenda.

OOC delivered another round of important political and financial pledges, with a noticeable increase in commitments tied to ocean–climate solutions, maritime decarbonization and ocean science. With now over 2,900 commitments made at all OOCs worth approximately $169 billion, this year’s conference reaffirmed the value of voluntary commitments and the importance of ensuring they have adequate financing.

People gather at the 2025 UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France
World leaders and representatives from governments and organizations gathered in Nice, France, for the third UN Ocean Conference. Events like these helped drive critical momentum on ocean action. Photo by FAO/Alessandra Benedetti/Flickr.

Meanwhile, the UNOC generated political momentum around several structural priorities, including the expansion of high-quality Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), integrated ocean–climate action, and the strengthening of sustainable ocean management frameworks, including Sustainable Ocean Plans and the 100% Approach into the UNOC Political Declaration. It also highlighted a major problem in how to capacitate these initiatives, with a new report finding ocean finance is only a fraction of the estimated $550 billion annually required to secure long-term ocean health.

The IUCN World Conservation Congress provided a key opportunity to reinforce the ocean’s role in global climate and biodiversity efforts and this year it also helped sustain momentum from UNOC to COP30. It highlighted the need to accelerate delivery on marine protection, the halting of plastic pollution and implementation of Sustainable Ocean Plans. But again, without significantly expanded ocean finance, progress on conservation and resilience will fall short.

Importantly, COP30 in Brazil marked a turning point for ocean–climate integration. For the first time at this scale, countries emphasized 100% sustainable ocean management, nature-based climate solutions and maritime decarbonization as essential components of achieving global climate goals.  A recent analysis shows that among 66 newly submitted national climate plans (known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs)  from coastal and island countries, 61 include at least one ocean-related measure — an increase from 62% in 2015, to 73% in 2022, and now 92% of the NDCs submitted by November 6 for the 2025 cycle. This was further highlighted by six new countries joining the Blue NDC Challenge, which calls on all countries to place the ocean at the heart of their climate plans.

This has now helped to set the stage for COP31 next year in Turkey, which offers an opportunity for further elevation of the ocean given Turkey’s longstanding maritime history. This in conjunction with Australia, a co-lead of the 100% Sustainable Ocean Management Alliance, leading negotiations, COP31 has the potential to become the “blue COP” many in the international ocean community have long called for.

While across all major 2025 events and moments, the world demonstrated clearer alignment on the ocean’s importance for people, nature and climate.

Was 2025 Indeed a ‘Super Year’ for the Ocean?

2025 was a good year for ocean governance in particular — but the challenge going into 2026 will be to match that political attention with the financing, governance reforms and implementation capacity required. The threats facing the ocean remain existential, not just to those that live in coastal regions. Momentum built this year must deliver measurable benefits for ecosystems, communities and climate stability in the years ahead.