With just three years to 2030 – the major milestone for global biodiversity commitments – the world is not on track to meet them. A Global Review of progress towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework confirms that implementation is lagging across the board, highlighting marine and coastal regions as a major gap. Marine and coastal ecosystems face overlapping pressures from industrial fishing, coastal developments, pollution and other industrial activities.
Governments commit to conservation internationally while continuing to approve destructive activities nationally, so when it comes to marine and coastal areas, only 10.04% are protected or conserved to some degree. Even that figure does not tell the whole story: many areas counted as protected remain exposed to destructive activities, or fail to respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and coastal communities.
With decision makers meeting at the UN Biodiversity Conference COP17 in Yerevan, the question is, how can governments close the implementation gap when it comes to marine protection, while supporting and centering the leadership of Indigenous Peoples and local communities?
Protecting 30% of land and ocean by 2030 is not simply about reaching a numerical target. Protection must be effective and equitably governed, respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and address the destructive activities driving biodiversity loss.
For coastal communities, governments' failure is not abstract. In Thailand's Chana district, coastal communities have resisted an industrial estate project they did not choose, while establishing Talae Na Baan zones in which they set fishing rules, restore biodiversity through traditional "fish homes" and protect local waters. Yet these community-led solutions often lack formal legal recognition and can be overridden by large-scale state concessions. In Chile, legal frameworks exist to recognise Indigenous stewardship of marine and coastal areas, but weak and slow implementation leaves communities facing continued industrial pressures. These cases expose the injustices small-scale fishers, Indigenous Peoples and local communities often have to face. Those who have been protecting vital ecosystems for generations are often sidelined, treated as stakeholders to be consulted within someone else's plans, and often not even that.
Top-down conservation can consequently restrict access to customary waters without addressing the industrial activities driving their destruction. Protecting the marine and coastal ecosystems on which we all depend requires more than participation: it requires legal recognition of the customary and tenure rights and scaling up community-led conservation initiatives, alongside support for community-led and co-managed governance of protected and conserved areas.
As governments meet at COP17, the debate over marine protection must go beyond how much ocean is designated as protected. Marine ecosystems do not follow administrative boundaries. Mangroves, seagrass beds, coral reefs, migration routes and the high seas are part of the same living ocean. Protecting isolated patches while the surrounding waters remain exposed to pollution, destructive fishing or extraction will not halt biodiversity loss.
The entry into force of the new agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, known as the BBNJ Agreement or Global Ocean Treaty, creates a historic opportunity to protect biodiversity on the high seas. Synergies between the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Global Ocean Treaty can help drive a seamless network of protected areas from coastal waters to the high seas. But effective marine protection is not only about where protected areas are established. It is also about who has the power to shape and govern them.
Indigenous Peoples and coastal communities must have a decisive role in decisions affecting the waters, livelihoods and cultures they have sustained for generations. The evidence shows what this can achieve. After more than a decade of community management, the Kawawana community conserved area in Senegal had restored a heavily degraded ecosystem, with 20 fish species, manatees, dolphins and crocodiles returning. The recovery also helped revitalise the local fisheries economy and improve people's quality of life. This is not simply a case for consulting communities: it shows what becomes possible when their authority, knowledge and governance are recognised and supported.
Governments increasingly praise Indigenous Peoples and local communities as essential partners in protecting biodiversity, while continuing to deny them meaningful authority over the ecosystems they sustain. At CBD COP17 the UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan in October, consultation and participation alone will not be enough. Governments must uphold Indigenous Peoples' distinct rights to self-determination, customary tenure and free, prior and informed consent. They must equally recognise the rights and role of local communities and small-scale fishers by securing their access to coastal resources and giving them real influence over decisions affecting their waters and livelihoods.
An ocean area is not truly protected if destructive activities continue inside it. Nor is conservation just if the people who have stewarded those waters for generations are pushed aside in the process.
COP17 should not be another round of ambitious speeches. Governments must close the gap between commitment and delivery, and shift power and resources for ocean protection towards the people already defending the sea.
The Global Review makes the failure visible. Governments gathering in Yerevan must make ocean justice part of the solution.
Dr Erika Bjureby Saldes is the Biodiversity Global Political Lead at Greenpeace International and Nichanan Tanthanawit is the Global Project lead for Ocean Justice Campaign at Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Thailand.
