The Third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) is scheduled to take place in Nice, France, from June 9 to 13, 2025. Co-hosted by France and Costa Rica in the beautiful Mediterranean city Nice, UNOC3 aims to accelerate global action to conserve and sustainably use the ocean, aligning with Sustainable Development Goal 14 “Life below water”. UNOC3 builds on the previous UNOC2 hosted by Portugal and Kenya in Lisbon in 2022.1 Important parallel events will take place in the vicinity of the conference, including the One Ocean Science Congress (OOSC) from June 3-6 and the Blue Economy and Finance Forum in Monaco from June 7-8. The Environmental Politics Research Group (EPRG) of the University of Vienna organizes its own side event on the “Making the Digital Twin of the Ocean fit for Global Marine Governance Ethics, Politics, and Transformative Power“ on Thursday June 12 at 6pm in the Marine Station Villefranche-sur-mer.
UNOC3 arrives at a critical juncture, as the world aims to find multilateral solutions to escalating challenges such as rising ocean temperatures, plastic pollution, overfishing, and the degradation of marine ecosystems. UNOC3 is expected to bring together more than 60 world leaders, dozens of ministers, about 4,000 government officials and 6,000 members of civil society (Associated Press). Some key objectives include securing commitments totaling $100 billion to support ocean conservation efforts and advancing initiatives and collaborations especially at the regional and subregional level to protect 30% of ocean waters, eliminate plastic pollution, decarbonize maritime transport, and enhance scientific understanding of ocean ecosystems.
The possibly most exciting and crucial goal of UNOC3, however, is the achievement of the necessary 60 ratifications for the 2023 Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement, see our publication here)2. While this ‘race to ratification’ has certainly gained momentum in the days leading up to UNOC3, as six countries plus the EU deposited their ratification in the week before the Nice Conference (HSA Ratification Tracker), it will remain a close and ambitious race to be followed in the next two weeks. Finally, the conference aims to conclude with a political UN Ocean Conference Declaration for which the draft has already been circulated.
On the EU side, the EU Commission is expected to present its Oceans Pact on June 4, in time for UNOC. Developed with stakeholder input over the past months, the Pact will outline the EU’s political vision for its Ocean policies. The Pact is expected to include a new “Enforcement Strategy” to strengthen compliance with EU and international commitments. Furthermore, the EU in its ‘European Digital Ocean Pavilion’ will present an immersive and interactive exhibition showcasing the EU Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO), which it regards as a cornerstone of future decision-making in Ocean management. The launch of the EU DTO is expected to be one of the major events of UNOC3.
The Environmental Politics Research Group (EPRG) from the University of Vienna will participate in UNOC3 and the OOSC, conducting research and important data collection, presenting work from different ongoing projects, and organizing their own side event on DTOs. In the following we give an overview about our activities at UNOC3 in chronological order:
OOSC Poster Presentation – TwinPolitics
At the One Ocean Science Congress, Paul will give a poster presentation on the ERC-funded research project TwinPolitics under Theme 10 of the conference: “Vibrant science to inform and support ocean action”. This presentation will take place from Tuesday (June 3rd) – Thursday (June 5th) from 6-8 pm in the poster area ‘La Baleine’. The poster provides an overview of the project’s efforts to study the construction and global use of digital twins of the ocean (DTO) using empirical social science methods, highlighting involved actors, discourses, and political questions (e.g. trust-building; data standardization; geopolitics).
OOSC Presentation – Data Practices at the Science-Policy Interface
On the closing day of the One Ocean Science Congress, Arne will give a presentation in the panel “Inclusive science-policy-society interfaces” within the Theme 10 of the conference: “Vibrant science to inform and support ocean action”. On Friday 6th of June between 11h20 and 11h30 in Room 4 in Port Lympia, Arne will present on behalf of the co-authors Alice Vadrot, and Felix Wurm on “From Science-Policy to Data-Policy Interfaces: Unpacking Biodiversity Monitoring Data Practices”, a research paper conducted within the MARCO-BOLO Project. The presented study looks at how people at the science-policy interface actually use biodiversity monitoring data and finds that focusing on shared data practices across users helps to better understand and improve how data can inform policy decisions.
Ocean Data Survey TwinPolitics
During the whole OOSC and UNOC3, the EPRG research team will launch and disseminate the Ocean Data Survey, in various venues, primarily within the Blue Zone. This important research part of the TwinPolitics project aims to anticipate the future uses, applications and challenges of technologies like Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTOs) in international negotiations and policy-making process and thus our research team will invite UNOC3 participants to fill out a survey interested in the use of ocean data, technology and knowledge by actors involved in ocean-related negotiations and policy-making. Please contribute to this research by filling out this survey here.
Collaborative Event Ethnography
Following the research interest in the DTO, and how this technology is developed, presented, used and discussed, Carolin—supported by the rest of the team— will conduct (hybrid) ethnographic fieldwork at UNOC to gather data for her dissertation within the ERC-funded research project TwinPolitics, focusing on the politics of the EU DTO. Fieldnotes will be systematically taken starting from June 3rd online, with on-site data collection occurring from June 9th to 13th following the methods developed in MARIPOLDATA (see here).
Side event in cooperation with EMBRC and MARCO-BOLO
Finally, on Thursday the 12th of June at 6pm in the Marine Station Villefranche-sur-mer (Auditorium, Institut de la Mer de Villefranche-sur-Mer, 12 June 2025, 6 p.m.) the EPRG, together with our partners from EMBRC Paris will host a side event on “Making the Digital Twin of the Ocean fit for Global Marine Govenance Ethics, Politics, and Transformative Power“. This side event brings together the two main themes of UNOC, namely the launch of the EU DTO and the possible entry into force of BBNJ to understand how an EU DTO can become not just technologically and scientifically robust but also equitable in the context of international marine policy and agreement making. To discuss this key topic, this high-level panel connects experts from research, policy makers and diplomats – i.e. relevant actors from the whole ocean data to DTO to international policymaking value chain – to discuss how a DTO can be used in international marine policymaking and how different regions view this European initiative.
For this panel, we, together with EMBRC are incredibly pleased to welcome
Pascal Lamy, Vice-President of Paris Peace Forum, Coordinator of the Jacques Delors Think Tanks (Paris, Berlin, Brussels), Former DG of WTO, Former Trade Commissioner (European Commission),
Andrei Polejack, Director of Research and Innovation, National Institute for Ocean Research – INPO, Brazil,
Angelique Pouonneau, Lead Negotiator of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS),
And Vanessa Yepes-Narváez, Researcher, Marine and Coastal Research Institute „José Benito Vives de Andréis“ (INVEMAR), Colombia
to the panel hosted by
Alice Vadrot | Professor for Environmental Politics and International Relations at the University of Vienna, Principal Researcher of the ERC Project “TwinPolitics”
Nicolas Pade | Executive Director of the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC)
Please register here for the event.
1 See the joint blogpost by MARIPOLDATA and IDDRI https://www.maripoldata.eu/un-oceans-conference-2022-bbnj-treaty/ for an analysis of Paul Dunshirn, Arne Langlet and Klaudija Cremers of UNOC2 in 2022
2 For our work on BBNJ, please visit www.maripoldata.eu or see Alice B. M. Vadrot, Arne Langlet, Paul Dunshirn, Simon Fellinger, Silvia C. Ruiz-Rodríguez, Ina Tessnow-von Wysocki; Zooming In on Agreement-Making: Tracing the BBNJ Negotiations with the MARIPOLDATAbase. Global Environmental Politics 2024; 24 (4): 152–178. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00767
