Amsterdam, Netherlands – Greenpeace International launched a new report warning that the global target to protect at least 30% of the world's oceans and other vital ecosystems by 2030 is on a path to failure, unless governments place human rights at the centre of marine conservation, today.
The report, "Global Ocean Justice Now: Making the Case for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Marine Conservation," is founded in long-standing collaboration with impacted communities. Ecosystems managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities tend to be healthier, more biodiverse, and more resilient than surrounding areas with different governance. Yet, the report documents how communities are being pushed out, ignored, and actively harmed by state-sanctioned industrial developments and extractive industries. By consistently prioritising corporate profit and extractive industries, and by starving community-led conservation of critical support, governments are fundamentally failing to meet their international commitments.
Nichanan Tanthanawit, Global Project Lead, Greenpeace Ocean Justice Campaign said: "Too many governments are treating the 30×30 targets like a numbers game. You cannot claim to protect the ocean while excluding the very communities who have protected these ecosystems for generations. The science is already clear: oceans are healthier where communities have rights, power, and stewardship."
The report is being launched as world leaders begin the six-month countdown to the Convention on Biological Diversity's COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia, where for the first time, countries will take stock of the stay of play of implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. COP17 offers a critical window for course correction, where world leaders must accelerate efforts to recognise Indigenous Peoples and local communities' rights on the ground as well as their key role in nature protection and management. At its core, the report exposes the rise of so-called "paper parks": protected areas that exist on maps but offer little real-world protection, and non-inclusive conservation tools that are collecting dust on a shelf and are not implemented in practice.
This failure, the report shows, is structural. Governments consciously choose to routinely overlook the most time-tested form of ocean stewardship in human history: the knowledge, governance systems, and daily practices of Indigenous Peoples and local communities who have sustained coastal ecosystems for generations. Instead, by displacing those communities to make room for industrial projects described as "national development," the ecological damage mounts and the biodiversity targets slip further out of reach.
Tanthanawit added: "Development cannot continue to be defined only through top-down policies," "Across the world, coastal communities are already showing the will and leadership to move development and conservation forward on their own terms. Without meaningful participation, 30×30 risks becoming just another number on paper."
From industrial salmon farming in Patagonia, to fishmeal factories in West Africa, to sand mining in Sri Lanka and mega-port developments in Southern Thailand, the report exposes this growing contradiction: governments are promising ocean protection internationally while enabling ecological destruction domestically. But communities are not victims – Indigenous Peoples and local communities are the architects of some of the world's most effective marine protection systems.
Mamadou Kaly Ba, Campaigner, Greenpeace Africa said: "Senegal's coastal communities are facing an unprecedented crisis driven by industrial overfishing, fishmeal and fish oil production, pollution, and offshore oil and gas expansion, all of which threaten our marine ecosystems, food security, and traditional livelihoods. Yet across our coastline, communities are proving that sustainable and community-led marine conservation works when local people are empowered and included in decision-making. We urgently need stronger protection for small-scale fisheries, greater recognition of community rights, and a phase out of fishmeal and fish oil production if we are to secure a just and sustainable future for Senegal's ocean and coastal communities."
Anita Perera, Campaigner, Greenpeace South Asia said: "From severe environmental degradation and external development pressures to a recent catastrophic shipping disaster that dumped over 1,600 tonnes of plastic into South Asian waters, the communities in Mannar have withstood a continuous ecological onslaught. Yet, through unyielding resistance, they fought their way to a landmark Presidential decree requiring local consent before any energy project can proceed. When frontline communities assert their right to self-determination, they don't just protect biodiversity – they reshape legal frameworks."
Greenpeace is calling on governments to urgently implement the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF) and the 30×30 protection target. To do so, global efforts must prioritise redirecting conservation funding to community-led stewardship, halting destructive industrial activity in sensitive marine areas, and centering the rights and food security of Indigenous and coastal communities at every step.
