Aziz Woodward
On January 17, 2026, the United Nations’ “High Seas Treaty” went into force after gaining the required sixty ratifications by national governments.[1] The treaty, also called the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, is a multilateral convention which sets out to help the UN meet its goals of protecting ocean biodiversity as articulated by Goal 14 of 17 of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was adopted by all members of the UN in 2015.[2] Goal 14 of the 2030 Agenda calls on member states to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”[3] The BBNJ Agreement was implemented under the auspices of a prior UN treaty, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which established an international legal regime governing activities on, over, and under the world’s oceans.[4]
The BBNJ Agreement expands the scope of UNCLOS to attempt to protect oceanic biodiversity in international waters through four key mechanisms.[5] The agreement requires that parties to the agreement conduct environmental impact assessments identifying and evaluating potential impacts of their activity, when that activity is conducted in international waters and may pollute or cause significant harm to the marine environment.[6] Members are also required to implement capacity building mechanisms to help developing nations meet their obligations under the BBNJ Agreement, through the transfer and development of marine information and technology.[7] The agreement also takes the step of designating marine genetic resources found in international waters beyond countries’ exclusive economic zones to be “in the interests of all States and for the benefit of all humanity” rather than a resource in common which can be harvested without regard to the rights and interests of other states.[8] Finally, and most significantly, the BBNJ Agreement creates a framework for establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) which creates zones in international waters where natural resources and biodiversity are protected through the prohibition or limiting of activities which could harm the marine environment.[9] These MPAs will be selected based on available science and traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples.[10]
The BBNJ Agreement is a significant step towards protecting the world’s oceans from the kind of unrestricted development and pillaging which has decimated terrestrial and coastal ecosystems across the globe.[11] However, while the treaty is now in force, this step is still not meaningfully complete. The mechanisms of the treaty, particularly the MPAs it will establish, have yet to be developed and requires further collaboration and decision making by the UN, a process which will likely take years.[12] The way which the new treaty will interact with existing oversight bodies also remains to be seen, especially as the treaty cannot undermine existing laws and fisheries rules and must also contend with nations like the United States which have not ratified the treaty and thus are not legally bound by it.[13] Also, the world in which this new treaty has emerged is one of collapsing international coalitions coupled with the weakening of international law.[14] This is hardly a ripe environment for a new environmental protection regime based on international cooperation to thrive.
The damage may already have been done as some of the largest threats to vulnerable marine ecosystems—such as rising ocean temperatures and acidification driven by rising carbon dioxide levels—are systemic, rather than particularized to any marine protected area.[15] Also, without a mechanism of enforcement, the treaty lacks the power to protect marine ecosystems from illegal fishing which accounts for 28% of global harvesting of marine life.[16] In spite of these concerns, the true impact of the treaty will not be truly felt until years in the future.[17] There is a lot of reason to be optimistic, as the BBNJ Agreement represents a victory for multilateralism and the global struggle to protect natural resources, even as world leaders turn their gaze inward and away from the community of nations and the environment that supports them.
[1] Caitlin Keating-Bitonti, Cong. Rsch. Serv., The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ)
Agreement (or High Seas Treaty) (2026).
[2] See UN News, Beyond Borders: Why New ‘High Seas’ Treaty is Critical for the World, United Nations (June 19, 2025), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/06/1137857.
[3] The Sustainable Development Goals Extended Report 2025, United Nations Statistics Division (Apr. 30, 2025), https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2025/extended-report/Extended-Report-2025_Goal-14.pdf.
[4] Caitlin Keating-Bitonti, supra note 1.
[5] Id.
[6] Agreement Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, June 19, 2023, at art. 28 [hereinafter BBNJ Agreement].
[7] Id. at art. 41.
[8] Id. at art. 11.
[9] Id. at art. 22.
[10] Id. at art. 21.
[11] See Regina Lam, Battering of Global Cooperation Clouds Future of High Seas Treaty, Dialogue Earth (Mar. 25, 2026), https://dialogue.earth/en/ocean/battering-of-global-cooperation-clouds-future-of-high-seas-treaty/.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] The Sustainable Development Goals Extended Report 2025, supra note 3.
[16] Countering Illegal Fishing, Seawards https://www.seawards.fr/en/to-know-to-take-action/countering-illegal-fishing/ (last visited Mar. 30, 2026).
[17] Lam, supra note 11.