The ocean is fundamental for the well-being and survival of the people and planet. It is, therefore, vitally important for the 2025 UN Ocean Conference to identify and implement urgent action to conserve and ensure sustainable use of the ocean, and support the implementation of SDG 14 (Life under water) through a human rights-based approach. 

The One Ocean Hub has submitted inputs in response to the Global Online Stakeholder Consultation on Ocean Action Panels for the 2025 UN Ocean Conference. The submission was prepared by Senia Febrica (University of Strathclyde, UK) with Nina Rivers (University of Strathclyde, UK), Stuart Jeffrey (Glasgow School of Art, UK), and Holly Niner and Giulia La Bianca (University of Plymouth, UK). The Hub’s submission focuses on three key themes: (1) fostering sustainable fisheries management including supporting small-scale fishers; (2) leveraging ocean-climate-biodiversity interlinkages; and (3) increasing ocean-related scientific cooperation, knowledge, capacity building, marine technology and education to strengthen the science-policy interface for ocean health.  The key messages put forward by the Hub are outlined below. 

1 ) Fostering sustainable fisheries management 

• Partnerships for a human-rights based approach in small-scale fisheries advanced understanding of the multiple threats to the rights of small-scale fishers to have a voice in decisions affecting their lives, health, culture, food and livelihoods, and garner further support for small-scale fishers who act as environmental human rights defenders. 

• It is crucial to bring clarity on the content of the human rights-based approach to small-scale fisheries and build the capacities of fisheries-related communities of practice to protect human rights in their work.   

• New ways of working and approaches that have proved helpful to support accelerated implementation of SDG14 include the integration of the arts-based approaches into small-scale fisheries research, conservation and management, as the Hub piloted at the closing ceremony of the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture at FAO.  

• The arts, both as methods and research, serve as a powerful vehicle to address power imbalances, nurture solidarity and voice the views of marginalised groups, particularly Indigenous knowledge holders and local knowledge holders, who are often overlooked in decision-making processes related to fisheries. 

The Hub’s participatory and arts-based research findings have been incorporated directly in the co-development of the following high-level outputs to support sustainable small-scale fisheries: 

• FAO global “Policy and Legal Diagnostic Tool for Sustainable SSF,” published in March 2022), co-developed with FAO to support the implementation of the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries  in the Context of Food in national laws and policies (SSF Guidelines); 

•FAO e-learning course “Legal and policy considerations for sustainable small-scale fisheries,” published in October 2022); 

•The first policy brief co-developed by the Hub, FAO and UNOHCHR “Applying coherently the human rights framework to SSF for achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals,” published in November 2022; 

•SSF-LEX is FAO’s free online legal and policy database co-developed by FAO and One Ocean Hub that is entirely dedicated to supporting the implementation of the SSF Guidelines (published in January 2023); and 

•Hub research contributed to the planning of the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA) and SSF Summit with FAO and 60 organisations who were supporters of IYAFA. 

2 ) Leveraging ocean, climate and biodiversity interlinkages 

•There is a pressing need to mainstream the integration of arts and science to provide innovative, effective, and exciting means to leverage ocean-climate-biodiversity interlinkages.

• The integration of art and science does not only serve as an effective means to communicate research, but also to support meaningful and respectful engagement with traditional knowledge holders in ocean-climate-biodiversity governance.  

•The diversity of ways to integrate arts and science has the potential to move experience and practices from different knowledge systems into mainstream society and decision-making processes that are crucial to adapt to and mitigate climate change, as well as halt and reverse biodiversity loss, as recently underscored by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea; 

•Arts-based research has created better understanding of injustices faced by Indigenous Peoples and local communities and their unique role as critical guardians of biodiversity. 

•New ways of working and fair partnerships that could support accelerated implementation of SDG 14 should focus on the emotional connections to the ocean of those most directly impacted by its health, to better understand governance and human rights challenges. An example of such transformative action in ocean-climate-biodiversity (as exemplified by the Hub’s Deep Emotional Engagement Programme – The DEEP Fund).  

The nine DEEP fund community projects in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Ghana and South Africa produced a range of outputs including murals, tapestry, documentary film, song and video, an illustrated children’s book, wearable art and digital content. Each project has had multiple local impacts, e.g. in terms of capacity building, creative economies, as well as evidencing the value of Indigenous knowledge for understanding climate change and the impact of industrial fishing practices on local communities. Insights from the Hub’s DEEP Fund Community Art-Based Research Methodology were shared at a number of high-level forums: 

•An online virtual version of the “Undercurrents” exhibition of DEEP Fund works (originally held in Glasgow in April 2023) was launched on World Ocean Day 2023.  

•Stuart Jeffrey, Glasgow School of Art, presented at the UN Climate COP26 roundtable discussion featuring leading academics on “The Ocean and Climate Justice: Impact, Adaptation and Mitigation” for the Scottish Government Climate Ambition Zone event on 5 November 2021. 

•The Pacific story and method were shared at the UN Climate COP27 (attended by the Vanuatu Minister for Climate Change, Ralph Regenvanu). 

•A Hub-led side-event titled “Presenting Transdisciplinary Toolbox for transformative Ocean Governance” took place at the UN Ocean Science Decade Conference (April 2024, Barcelona, Spain) 

•A presentation by Stuart Jeffrey and Lisa McDonald (Glasgow School of Art, UK) and Elisa Morgera (University of Strathclyde, UK) titled “Undercurrents: community art, indigenous cultural heritage and ocean governance” was delivered at the World Biodiversity Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that took place on 16-21 June 2024. 

3 ) Increasing ocean-related scientific cooperation, knowledge, capacity building, marine technology and education 

•All ocean stakeholders, particularly governments, need to place the human right to science at the core of marine research. 

•The human right to science is at the crux of the Hub marine research, contributing to SDG 14 Target 14.A ‘Increase scientific knowledge, research and technology for ocean health’ and SDG 13 Target 13.3 ‘Build knowledge and capacity to meet climate change’.  

•An effective measure to subvert current inequities in marine science, is to support fair research partnerships and mutual capacity building for marine science between high-income and low-and-middle income countries (LMIC). 

•One of the new ways of working developed under the Hub to accelerate implementation of SDG 14 in the context of ocean-scientific cooperation is the Hub’s inter-and-trans-disciplinary approaches in integrating different knowledge systems and learning from multiple conceptions of the deep sea, for holistic and plural ocean literacies, as we shared at the UN Ocean Science Decade Conference in Barcelona in April 2024. 

•Understanding and surfacing different ways of knowing the deep sea, as well as decolonising deep-sea science, are critical steps in addressing issues of inequity in representation and participation in decision-making on the deep sea (including with Indigenous knowledge systems). 

Some of the Hub’s capacity-building outputs on marine research and capacity building in LMIC include: 

•Ocean literacy project ‘MzanSea: Revealing South Africa’s Marine Ecosystems’ and resources that it produced (e.g. book, website) led by South Africa National Biodiversity Institute; 

•SMarTaR-ID Web Portal and South Atlantic species catalogue to create a standardised marine taxon reference image database that is very important for marine biodiversity surveying and monitoring; 

•Broad-scale benthic habitat classification of the South Atlantic; 

•Metadata for the Central and South Atlantic Offshore and Deep-Sea Benthos; 

•Novel methods for investigating coral porosis in coral skeletons by adapting methods from the field of osteoporosis; 

•Deep-sea ecosystem services (ES) framework and maps for deep-sea habitats in the northeast Atlantic, subsequently transferred to novel geographical regions in the South Atlantic within Ascension, St Helena, and Tristan marine protected areas; 

•StrathE2E: a marine end-to-end ecosystem model for shelf seas. It has been published as an R package in 2021 and an online application in 2022; 

• The trophic model of Algoa Bay to predict the impacts of climate change on fisheries and develop and test adaptation scenarios; 

•Refined methodologies for collecting microplastics that is relatively inexpensive, and a new database on microplastics in Ghana; 

•Capacity development cruise conducted in February 2023 aimed to build the offshore sampling capacity of emerging researchers from Southern Africa.   

Next international engagements 

The One Ocean Hub will share further findings and lessons learned from its research on sustainable small-scale fisheries, ocean-climate-biodiversity interlinkages, and ocean-related scientific cooperation and capacity building at: 

•the UN Biodiversity COP16 in Cali, Colombia on 21 October-1 November 2024,  

•The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) 52nd Session in Rome on 21-25 October 2024, and  

•UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France on 9-13 June 2025.