The Global Partnership for Oceans is a growing alliance of more than 100 governments, international organizations, civil society groups, and private sector interests committed to addressing the threats to the health, productivity and resilience of the world’s oceans.
It aims to tackle widely documented problems of overfishing, pollution, and habitat loss. Together these problems are contributing to the depletion of a natural resource bank that provides nutrition, livelihoods and vital ecosystem services.
The Partnership will work toward meeting the following interrelated objectives by 2022
Sustainable seafood and livelihoods from capture fisheries and aquaculture
In line with previous internationally agreed commitments* and taking into consideration growing impacts of climate change:
- Significantly increase global food fish production from both sustainable aquaculture and sustainable fisheries by adopting best practices and reducing environmental and disease risk to stimulate investment
- Reduce the open access nature of fisheries by creating responsible tenure arrangements, including secure access rights for fishers and incentives for them to hold a stake in the health of the fisheries; and
- Enable the world’s overfished stocks to be rebuilt and increase the annual net benefits of capture fisheries by at least $20 billion, including through reducing subsidies that promote overfishing.
Critical coastal and ocean habitats and biodiversity
In line with previous internationally agreed targets and to address the growing impacts of climate change:
- Halve the current rate of natural habitat loss and reduce habitat degradation and fragmentation, by applying ecosystem-based approaches to management;
- Increase marine managed and protected areas, and other effective area-based conservation measures, to include at least 10% of coastal and marine areas; and
- Conserve and restore natural coastal habitats to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience to climate change impacts.
Pollution reduction
In line with previous internationally agreed commitments and taking into consideration the growing impacts of climate change:
- Reduce pollution to levels not detrimental to ecosystem function and biodiversity; and
- Support implementation of the Global Program of Action to reduce pollution, particularly from marine litter, waste water and excess nutrients, and further develop consensus for achievable goals to reduce these pollutants.
*Note: The previously agreed international commitments and targets referenced in this Declaration include those made in Rio in 1992 in Agenda 21, and subsequently at Johannesburg in 2002 and in the Aichi Biodiversity Targets in Nagoya in 2010.
