Since its founding in 2011, the High Seas Alliance with its 50+ non-governmental members and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has been working towards protecting the 50% of the planet that is the High Seas; the global ocean beyond national jurisdiction. This area includes some of the most biologically important, least protected, and most critically threatened ecosystems in the world.
High Seas Alliance members work together to inspire, inform and engage the public, decision-makers and experts to support and strengthen High Seas governance and conservation, as well as cooperating towards the establishment of High Seas marine protected areas.
The High Seas Alliance played a leading role in the years of negotiations to reach the High Seas Treaty* Agreement on 4 March 2023. Our current priority is to ensure that the Treaty enters into force as soon as possible. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shift the status quo of High Seas governance and help protect marine life from the increasing impacts of overfishing, climate change, shipping and new activities, such as deep-seabed mining.
Until now, for most of the High Seas, there have been no legally binding mechanisms for establishing marine protected areas or a global coordination mechanism to assess the environmental impacts of activities in areas of the ocean beyond national jurisdiction. Having formally adopted the High Seas Treaty on 19 June, individual countries must now ratify the Treaty through their own domestic legal processes. The sixtieth country to ratify will trigger a hundred-and-twenty-day countdown, when the global Agreement will enter into force and become international law.