The European Union, IOC-UNESCO, World Resources Institute, and High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy are joining efforts to strengthen the Global Ocean Observing System.
Ocean observation capabilities are a critical infrastructure for understanding and responding to environmental change and for supporting sustainable development. Yet, global ocean observation today faces a number of challenges. It remains subcritical and insufficiently resourced, with significant gaps, especially in remote areas like polar and deep-sea regions and in the fields of biodiversity and ecosystems. These gaps leave blind spots in decision-making, especially for processes such as sustainable ocean planning, national adaptation plans, disaster risk reduction, and ocean-based mitigation strategies.
The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) operating under IOC-UNESCO with co-sponsorship from WMO, UNEP and the International Science Council, depends on a relatively limited base of contributors and mainly on short-term funding. Furthermore, the evolving geopolitical context creates additional challenges. A strategic rebalancing and renewed shared responsibility in funding GOOS is required to ensure its long-term functioning. Since no single country can observe the ocean alone, this pledging side event aims at generating collective and sustained commitments to support the sustainability of GOOS.
This side event will bring together participants from across regions, including governments, UN agencies, research institutions, private sector actors, and young and local voices from Africa and beyond. The event will highlight the importance of integrating food security and nutrition into ocean governance and development cooperation, as well as the importance of aquatic food systems for food security, supporting livelihoods, improving diet quality, and building resilience. This initiative aims to strengthen coordinated action at the ocean–food–nutrition nexus through improved data-sharing, enhanced regional collaboration, and stronger science–policy integration.
Aquatic food systems play a critical role in food security and nutrition, yet their full contribution remains underutilized due to persistent gaps in nutrient and contaminant data, which constrain evidence-based fisheries management and nutrition policymaking. Within the framework of the UN Decade of Ocean Science and the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition, there is a strategic opportunity to strengthen knowledge systems linking ocean and inland water resource management with health and nutrition objectives.
A key outcome will be the launch of a regional African working group on food composition data under the Global Action Network. This initiative aims to strengthen coordinated action at the ocean–food–nutrition nexus through improved data-sharing, enhanced regional collaboration, and stronger science–policy integration.
Despite growing commitments from governments, development banks, and philanthropic donors to protect marine ecosystems, less than 10% of ocean-related funding reaches community-level actors — not for lack of qualified organizations, but because existing finance mechanisms weren’t designed with them in mind.
This side event brings together communities, funders, governments, and data and technical providers to tackle that disconnect head-on. Drawing lessons from proven land restoration models in Africa— including TerraFund and the Land Accelerator — speakers will explore how redesigning funding access, monitoring systems, and capacity support can unlock finance for locally led ocean action. Topics will include what data local organizations actually need to access finance, how Indigenous and community knowledge can be integrated alongside conventional science, and what it takes to build the trust and transparency that makes these partnerships work.
The event will close with a call to action: an invitation for countries and organizations to contribute to a set of globally-informed principles for equitable, community-centered ocean finance and to join a community of practice committed to making those principles a reality.
Across Africa, governments are leading by example in using transparency to strengthen fisheries governance and improve management decisions. Through reforms in monitoring, data collection, and information sharing, countries are improving oversight, applying rules more fairly, and equipping institutions with the tools needed to protect marine ecosystems and support coastal livelihoods. For many African governments, transparency is more than a buzzword – it strengthens accountability, amplifies the voices of fishers and communities, and enables governments to manage fisheries on their own terms, for the benefit of people, the economy, and the ocean.
Fisheries transparency is gaining momentum globally, with African governments implementing some of the most advanced reforms today. This side event will bring African government leaders to the stage to share how these reforms are being designed and implemented, and their impacts. Drawing on experiences from Western, Central, Southern, and Eastern Africa, speakers will highlight what it takes to turn transparency commitments into action, the results already seen for livelihoods and enforcement, and lessons for fisheries governance worldwide
