The BBNJ Agreement, adopted on June 19, 2023, stands at a critical juncture: with 60 ratifications required for entry into force, it has garnered 50 as of June 18, 2025. This remarkable momentum peaked at the UN Ocean Conference (June 9-13, 2025) in Nice, where 18 countries deposited their instruments of ratification at a special treaty event, including Belgium and Greece.
This unprecedented pace of ratification reveals a fundamental shift in global ocean governance. Consider that the 1995 Fish Stocks Agreement – another UNCLOS implementing agreement – required approximately six years to achieve its 30 ratifications for entry into force. The BBNJ’s rapid progress reflects multiple converging factors: heightened awareness of marine biodiversity degradation, growing consensus on humanity’s need for responsible ocean stewardship, and recognition that our sustainable future depends on collective action.
The treaty’s urgency stems particularly from its potential to establish marine protected areas in the high seas, which encompass over 60% of the global ocean. While the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s 30% protection target in principle applies to individual nations, high seas protection carries unique significance, not only due to the vast area involved, but because these waters provide irreplaceable ecosystem services, from biodiversity conservation to climate resilience.
Equity Concerns at the Treaty’s Core
The BBNJ Agreement embeds human benefits within its fundamental architecture. Beyond establishing governance mechanisms to prevent the tragedy of the commons, the treaty incorporates transformative human rights dimensions. It addresses inequities in ocean access, recognizing that many nations lack the technological and financial capacity to reach these distant, and common waters. This acknowledgment challenges historical patterns where resource extraction has favored wealthy nations with advanced maritime capabilities.
Most significantly, the treaty formally recognizes and values indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge. Article 7 incorporates “the use of relevant traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, where available” as a guiding principle. This provision represents more than tokenistic inclusion, it signals a fundamental shift in how we understand ocean knowledge systems. Where data-driven science has historically dominated marine governance, the treaty acknowledges that traditional knowledge contains insights about ecosystem functioning and sustainable practices that can be practically applied.
Recent scholarship illuminates this paradigm shift. Caldeira et al.’s study, “Weaving science and traditional knowledge: Toward sustainable solutions for ocean management,” demonstrates how traditional knowledge can help identify both ecological values and cultural significance of marine areas. It can be implied from their study that recognizing cultural dimensions of biodiversity hotspots could shed further light on conservation values by protecting natural and cultural heritage simultaneously.
The Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges exemplify this integrated approach. Beyond their ecological significance as high seas MPA candidates, these seamounts carry cultural meaning: indigenous navigators historically used them as waypoints, while the seafloor preserves archaeological evidence of traditional fishing practices through ancient anchors and lines (Gaymer et al., 2025). Such examples reveal how the BBNJ Agreement could transform dominant narratives that have tended to marginalize both ecosystems and communities.
Implications Beyond “Beyond National Jurisdiction”
While the BBNJ Agreement governs areas beyond national jurisdiction, its normative innovations have begun to influence how we conceptualize ocean governance more broadly. Just as marine protected areas generate biodiversity spillover effects beyond their boundaries, the treaty’s principles create ripple effects in other environmental and ocean-related frameworks.
For Korea, which has no direct interface with the high seas, these spillover effects merit consideration. Korean waters encompass multiple stakeholders with diverse viewpoints on coordinating competing interests. Local and neighboring communities serve as knowledge holders of nearby ocean spaces, yet the question of how their knowledge and experiences might contribute to protecting our marine commons remains complex. The BBNJ’s normative innovations may offer insights for Korea’s ongoing efforts to reshape human-ocean relationships.
The treaty’s recognition of traditional knowledge opens space for broader reflection. Beyond indigenous peoples specifically, it suggests reconsidering whose voices have been underrepresented in ocean governance, those actually connected to marine spaces whose perspectives have been overshadowed; these may include those of humans and nature. This recognition invites examination of existing power dynamics between various entities surrounding oceans and coasts. Such examination might reveal pathways for addressing exploitative practices, though the specific forms this might take remain open questions requiring continued dialogue and effort.