UN Ocean Conference: It’s Time for a Fossil-Free Ocean – Center for International Environmental Law

Revealed June 3, 2025

By Bruna Campos, Senior Campaigner, Offshore Oil and Gasoline on the Middle for Worldwide Environmental Legislation. 

World leaders gathering from June 9 to 13 in Good, France, for the third United Nations Ocean Convention (UNOC3), have a vital alternative — and an pressing crucial — to acknowledge that the ocean must be free from fossil fuels. And CIEL shall be there with companions from throughout the globe demanding that governments take motion to section out oil and gasoline.

The ocean is affected by a triple planetary disaster: local weather change, biodiversity loss, and poisonous air pollution. The convention’s theme, “accelerating motion and mobilizing all actors to preserve and sustainably use the ocean,” is a rallying name to halt one of many best threats to the ocean: fossil fuels. Tackling offshore oil and gasoline should be on the middle of any motion to guard the ocean.

As co-hosts of UNOC, France and Costa Rica — each members of the Past Oil and Gasoline Alliance (BOGA) — might rally governments to take motion towards oil and gasoline as a vital method to shield our ocean from additional hurt and destruction.

Why We Want a Fossil-Free Ocean

Offshore oil and gasoline actions are quickly increasing throughout the oil and gasoline sector. Offshore oil and gasoline is positioned for its highest progress in a decade. As of early 2025, almost 29 % of all oil and gasoline is being extracted offshore. In 2024, offshore wells alone comprised 85 % of latest world discoveries. 

The continued growth of offshore oil and gasoline operations poses a major risk to the ocean and Indigenous Peoples, in addition to to the livelihoods of coastal communities. Furthermore, it undermines the proper to a clear, wholesome, and sustainable surroundings acknowledged by the United Nations.

Our blue planet won’t survive if we don’t make the ocean freed from fossil fuels. Offshore oil and gasoline exercise causes myriad harms throughout its life cycle, together with to ocean biodiversity.

How Does Offshore Oil and Gasoline Influence the Ocean?

Seismic surveys throughout exploration for offshore oil and gasoline drilling should not solely killing whales and dolphins in giant numbers, however are additionally impacting microorganisms that play a key function in supporting the meals net. This exacerbates meals insecurity, particularly in weak nations. 

The place there’s oil and gasoline manufacturing, oil spills happen commonly. Researchers have just lately documented that slow-leak oil slicks have largely gone undetected. These are on a regular basis oil leaks that aren’t being documented however disrupt the marine ecosystem. Moreover, there’s a excessive danger of blowouts, the uncontrolled launch of crude oil or gasoline from a nicely, resulting in fires, explosions, and main environmental injury. The deeper the nicely, the upper the chance of disasters that may have long-term impacts on the surroundings and human life. 

The transportation of oil and gasoline throughout the seas will also be extraordinarily damaging to marine life, particularly to corals. With the growth of liquefied pure gasoline (LNG) — gasoline that has been cooled to a liquid state for storage and transportation — there was a surge in vessel visitors delivery fossil fuels, amplifying the risk to very important ecosystems.

Moreover, deserted offshore infrastructure, comparable to oil rigs, platforms, and pipelines which are constructed at sea to discover, extract, and transport oil and gasoline, not solely results in extra contamination, but additionally attracts invasive species. As an illustration, solar corals connect themselves to offshore platforms, facilitating their unfold to new areas and harming native marine ecosystems.

These harms to marine and coastal life are solely compounded by the local weather impacts of offshore oil and gasoline, which — like all oil and gasoline — launch giant quantities of greenhouse gasoline (GHG) emissions that gasoline local weather change. Rising emissions are driving sea stage rise, ocean acidification, and air pollution. And whereas the ocean has huge potential as a carbon sink, this skill to sequester carbon is being jeopardized by rising emissions. 

The Authorized Responsibility to Make the Ocean Fossil-Free 

Governments all over the world have authorized obligations beneath worldwide legislation, together with the United Nations Conference on the Legislation of the Sea (UNCLOS), to halt this fossil-fueled marine air pollution and the local weather impacts imperiling the ocean and all life that depends upon it — together with coastal communities. For low-lying States, sea stage rise will not be a future risk however a gift disaster, undermining their territorial integrity, sovereignty, and proper to exist as impartial nations. Local weather change threatens self-determination: land is as soon as once more being stolen — this time by rising sea ranges. In an effort to cease sea stage rise, shield the surroundings, and defend their rights, many of those low-lying States are pushing for world negotiations on a Fossil-Gasoline Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT) that will guarantee a phaseout of fossil fuels.

Worldwide courts are weighing in on what States should do to guard the ocean and the local weather. The local weather advisory opinion (AO) from the Worldwide Tribunal for the Legislation of the Sea (ITLOS), the implementing court docket of the UNCLOS, clarified that GHG emissions represent air pollution of the marine surroundings, and governments have an obligation to take all measures essential to “stop, scale back and management” such air pollution. As a part of their ocean safety obligations, States should, subsequently, section out fossil fuels, the first supply of GHG emissions. The forthcoming advisory opinions from the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ) and the Inter-American Courtroom of Human Rights (IACtHR) might additional reinforce current obligations of States to take bold local weather motion — a crucial step towards making certain a fossil-free ocean.

Ocean Motion Panels: Debating the Whale within the Room

The impacts of fossil fuels on local weather change and ocean biodiversity are extensively documented, and the authorized obligations to behave are more and more clear. And but, multilateral areas proceed to fail to sort out the whale within the room: phasing out fossil fuels, as a vital “ocean-based mitigation motion” — UNOC lingo for measures in or on the ocean that mitigate local weather change.

Regardless of its outsized impression on local weather change, biodiversity, and marine air pollution, offshore oil and gasoline actions stay largely absent from ocean discussions. The ocean motion panels at UNOC3 are a collection of panel debates with main consultants that can tackle the highest ten challenges going through the ocean. With regard to offshore oil and gasoline, essentially the most related are Panel 7 “Leveraging ocean, local weather and biodiversity interlinkages,” Panel 9 “Selling the function of sustainable meals from the ocean for poverty eradication and meals safety,” and Panel 10 “Enhancing the conservation and sustainable use of oceans and their sources by implementing worldwide legislation as mirrored within the UNCLOS.” These panels current alternatives to spotlight completely different dimensions of the impression that offshore oil and gasoline have on the ocean.

The talk beneath Ocean Motion Panel 7, shall be a key second for the UNOC3 to acknowledge phasing out fossil fuels — significantly offshore actions — as THE ocean-based local weather mitigation motion wanted to realize Sustainable Growth Aim (SDG) 14, the aim set by the United Nations to “preserve and sustainably use the ocean, seas and marine sources” by 2030 and the premise for the UN Ocean Conferences.

Ocean Motion Panel 9 on meals safety can even be a possibility for a debate on how offshore oil and gasoline continues to impression the meals net, artisanal and small-scale fishers, and the rights of coastal communities. The UN Particular Rapporteur on the proper to meals, Michael Fakhri, clearly defined the impression of oil and gasoline on meals safety in his report on the impression of local weather change on fisheries.

Lastly, Ocean Motion Panel 10 will dive into the implementation of UNCLOS. This shall be a possibility to debate States’ obligations to take measures to fight local weather change, together with measures to halt offshore oil and gasoline exercise, as  vital ocean-based local weather mitigation actions.

On the Street to Belém: What Local weather Motion Seems Like

The UN Ocean Convention will not be a spot for the negotiation of latest legally binding agreements. Its success depends upon governments making daring new political commitments to successfully implement their current worldwide obligations, together with by confronting the fossil gasoline business. This implies taking motion to section out fossil fuels in line with the Rio Conventions, three worldwide agreements that tackle local weather change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation, together with the United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change (UNFCCC). Forward of this yr’s local weather conference in Belém, Brazil (COP30), governments ought to guarantee their newest nationwide local weather motion plans are “blue,” by adopting moratoria on offshore oil and gasoline growth and setting out measures to quickly and equitably section out ongoing manufacturing. Doing so would make a momentous contribution to the discount of GHG emissions and the safety of the ocean.

France and Costa Rica’s management at this yr’s UNOC offers an opportunity to drive the controversy in the proper route. Each of those nations banned offshore oil and gasoline actions inside their very own waters and are members of BOGA. They now have the chance to convey offshore oil and gasoline into the highlight of the Rio Conventions, urging different nations to align their ocean, biodiversity, and local weather insurance policies. 

UNOC3 is an important second for governments to acknowledge the impression of fossil fuels on the ocean, in addition to on Indigenous Peoples and coastal communities that rely on a wholesome ocean. Addressing the risk that oil and gasoline poses to the ocean will not be optionally available if we’re to guard world biodiversity, meet local weather targets, and obtain SDG14. The time for a fossil-free ocean is now. 

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