Oregon State University research into marine protected areas plays a crucial role in the historic "High Seas Treaty" that goes into effect Jan. 17.
Less than two years after OSU scientists led the publication of a landmark marine protected area guide in Science, the United Nations in June 2023 adopted the text of the treaty. The treaty's aim is to safeguard and sustainably use the high seas, the two-thirds of the ocean not under individual nations' control.
Known officially as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement, the treaty was under discussion for more than two decades. Once the agreement was opened for signatures, it took just three days for an economically and geographically diverse collection of 81 U.N. member states, including the U.S., to sign it, giving a non-binding signal of their intent to comply.
The first nation to ratify the High Seas Treaty - providing formal consent to being legally bound by it - was Palau in January 2024. The terms of the treaty call for it to go into effect 120 days after 60 nations have ratified it, and Morocco became the 60th on Sept. 19, 2025.
"It's time to celebrate," said Oregon State University Distinguished Professor Jane Lubchenco, senior author of "The MPA Guide: A framework to achieve global goals for the ocean," published in Science in September 2021.
"We have an unprecedented opportunity to protect and sustainably use the biodiversity in an area covering nearly half the planet," said Lubchenco, who writes about the treaty in an article published today in Nature Reviews Biodiversity. "That area houses phenomenal biodiversity, but it's declining and at risk. This new treaty is a very big deal and very good news - science is informing pioneering global policy, and needs to continue doing so."
OSU's Kirsten Grorud-Colvert and Jenna Sullivan-Stack were the lead authors of the MPA Guide, coordinating the contributions of more than three dozen scientists from around the globe to produce a road map for helping nations better plan, evaluate and monitor marine protected areas. MPAs are parts of the ocean set aside to protect ecosystems from extractive activities such as fishing, mining and drilling.
The World Data Base on Protected Areas, a United Nations affiliate, has adopted the MPA Guide and hosts its documents on its Protected Planet website, and the MPAtlas, an independent, non-governmental authority on ocean protection, bases its determinations on the MPA Guide. MPAs are categorized based on their level of protection.
"The guide was the culmination of decades of work by hundreds of scientists and stakeholders and established a structure for an evidence-based understanding of where we stand on ocean protection," said Grorud-Colvert, associate professor of integrative biology in the College of Science. "We obviously still have a lot of work to do, but the High Seas Treaty represents another huge milestone and I'm really proud of the part OSU plays in providing the science for establishing MPAs on the high seas."
Grorud-Colvert and Sullivan-Stack reflect further on the treaty in an editorial published today in Science.
Lubchenco says marine protected areas can deliver tangible ecological, conservation and social outcomes and are effective at protecting biodiversity from abatable threats if properly designed and supported.
In addition to Lubchenco, Grorud-Colvert and Sullivan-Stack, Oregon State's Vanessa Constant and Ana Spalding also contributed to the MPA Guide project. Constant was an integrative biology doctoral student at the time, and Spalding is a courtesy professor of marine and coastal policy in the colleges of Liberal Arts and Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.
"We need the social sciences if the High Seas Treaty is to reach its potential," said Lubchenco, who has served in numerous federal leadership roles including head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Social sciences emphasize the importance of inclusivity of geographies and cultures for effective treaty implementation."
To date, 145 of the United Nations' 193 member states have signed the treaty, and 81 have ratified it. The U.S. signed the treaty in 2023 but is not among the ratifying nations.
"Ratification is in every country's interest," Lubchenco said. "It means having a voice and vote in decisions, such as about creating marine protected areas or allowing activities like geoengineering or deep-ocean aquaculture that might impact their domestic fisheries or coastal waters. Not ratifying means you're ceding power to other nations for decisions that affect everyone."
Lubchenco's article in Nature Reviews Biodiversity includes a link to a map, known as a Spilhaus projection, that shows both the one-third of the ocean under countries' national jurisdiction - known as Exclusive Economic Zones - and the two-thirds that make up the high seas. The new map was created through a partnership among Lubchenco, Cory Langhoff of the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, and Dawn Wright of Esri, a company that develops geographic information systems software.
Wright, chief scientist at Esri, also holds a courtesy appointment in CEOAS.
"The map is a different view from what folks are used to seeing," Lubchenco said. "I like it because it emphasizes that although there are multiple ocean basins - the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, Indian, etc. - there is really only one ocean; it's all connected. Other Spilhaus projections have been created, but none that any of us could find that showed EEZs and the high seas, so we created one."
In addition to being NOAA's administrator from 2009 to 2013, Lubchenco led the Climate and Environment team at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2021 to 2025 and was the State Department's Science Envoy for the Ocean from 2014 to 2016. At Oregon State she is the Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology and Distinguished Professor of Integrative Biology.
