Article written by the Geneva Forum
Editorial direction: Mr Thomas EGLI, CEO.
A rich but still incomplete global governance
Ocean governance already exists. It has been built progressively, over decades, through legal frameworks, international conventions, specialized institutions, scientific organizations, coalitions of States, NGOs and regional networks. Today it forms a dense, sometimes impressive architecture, which frames the law of the sea, the high seas, marine biodiversity, fisheries, maritime transport, the seabed, pollution and scientific cooperation, and soon plastic...
This architecture is necessary. It has made it possible to establish rules, create mandates, distribute responsibilities, and enable a form of cooperation between States and between institutions. But it remains too fragmented to fully respond to the resilience crisis facing the Ocean. Each actor acts within its own field, each organization pursues its mandate, each convention responds to its purpose, each network produces its own data and its own priorities.
The result is paradoxical: the Ocean has many governance frameworks, but it does not yet have sufficiently integrated governance of its resilience. Rules exist, but not always the operational capacities to connect them to the field. Data exist, but not always the bridges needed to make them useful to decision-makers, funders and citizens. Funding exists, but not always projects that are sufficiently clear, structured and comparable to attract it. Citizens are ready to act, but not always the mechanisms allowing them to contribute to useful scientific action.
It is precisely this gap that must now be addressed.
A transformation already under way
In recent years, several major developments have shown that global Ocean governance is entering a new phase. The BBNJ agreement on the high seas marks a structuring step. The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science is strengthening scientific mobilization. A future Ocean COP is taking shape, with protocol leadership from New York, while its operational secretariat is still looking for its global headquarters and several countries have already positioned themselves.
At the same time, coastal cities and regions are beginning to establish themselves as governance actors in their own right. They are no longer only the places where the effects of the ocean crisis manifest themselves; they are becoming spaces for observation, experimentation, mobilization, prevention and adaptation. Approaches linked to the rights of nature are also progressing, proposing that certain ecosystems be considered no longer only as resources, but as living entities that must be represented, defended and protected. Blue finance, finally, is beginning to organize around new instruments, new standards, and new expectations in terms of measurable impact.
These developments are powerful. They show that the world is beginning to understand that the Ocean can no longer be governed only by sectors, by separate mandates or through one-off responses. But they remain scattered. They call for a capacity for connection, translation, coordination and project development. They call for a space where the different layers of governance can meet without competing, and strengthen one another without merging.
The central challenge: connecting
The central problem is therefore no longer only to create new institutions. The central problem is to connect what exists, what is emerging and what remains to be built. Connect legal frameworks to action capacities. Connect international organizations to territories. Connect scientists to citizens. Connect data to decisions. Connect projects to funders. Connect coastal countries to countries that, without direct physical contact with the Ocean, nonetheless depend profoundly on it.
This capacity to connect is now the heart of resilience. Without it, each initiative remains useful, but limited. With it, actions can become systemic, data can become strategic, funding can become transformational, and citizens can become genuine stakeholders in knowledge and action.
Connecting does not mean centralizing. Connecting means making efforts that might otherwise remain parallel compatible, readable, useful and cooperative. But also connecting to the implementation of decisions, to concrete action in the field. This is where Geneva can play a singular role.
International Geneva: a singular position
Geneva is not on the edge of the Ocean. That is precisely why its potential role is interesting. It does not have to claim a classic maritime legitimacy. It can propose something else: a legitimacy of connection, neutrality, cooperation, method and trust.
International Geneva brings together international organizations, United Nations agencies, global NGOs, humanitarian actors, scientific institutions, diplomats, foundations, educational networks, economic and financial actors, as well as project communities already working on the major challenges of sustainable development and peace. It is a place where silos can be brought into contact, where languages can be translated, where conflicts of priorities can become operational complementarities.
This capacity is not theoretical. It is part of Geneva’s very history and function. Today it becomes strategic for the Ocean, not because Geneva should replace New York, Nairobi, Paris, Lisbon, Nice, Monaco or coastal territories, but because it can help connect them within an ecosystem of action, data, projects and funding.
From classic diplomacy to Impact Diplomacy
In a world where crises are multiplying, diplomacy can no longer be limited to producing declarations, however necessary they may be. It must also make it possible to produce projects, roadmaps, indicators, operational cooperation and measurable results. It is within this evolution that Impact Diplomacy takes its place.
Impact Diplomacy does not replace scientific diplomacy, cultural diplomacy or classic multilateral diplomacy. It extends them by orienting them toward the structuring of projects capable of producing concrete effects. It seeks to bring together actors who do not always speak the same language: States, international organizations, NGOs, researchers, local authorities, funders, companies, educators and citizens.
Applied to the Ocean, this approach makes it possible to move from a governance of intention to a governance of implementation. It does not claim to solve ocean crises on its own, but it proposes a method to make solutions more readable, more fundable, more measurable and more cooperative.
A complementary governance dedicated to resilience
The aim is not to propose an additional governance that would simply be added to the others without articulation, but to propose a complementary governance, dedicated to dimensions that are still emerging or insufficiently addressed: citizen data, global educational mobilization, the participation of non-coastal countries, the connection between territories and multilateralism, the readability of projects for blue finance and impact finance, as well as the operational translation of major international frameworks.
This governance of Ocean resilience could be anchored in International Geneva, not as a center of power, but as a center of convergence. It could connect existing or planned governance frameworks elsewhere, while respecting their mandates, their competences and their places of leadership. It could also help structure areas that do not yet have a sufficiently operational global space.
It is a governance of complementarity. It does not seek to act in place of others. It seeks to make possible what others cannot always do alone.
Including all countries, including those without coastlines
One of the most important points is this: Ocean governance cannot remain the exclusive affair of coastal countries. Landlocked countries also breathe thanks to the Ocean. They too depend on its climatic, biological and economic balances. They too participate in the chains of consumption, transport, finance, education and research that directly influence the state of the seas.
The Global Citizen Science Alliance for Ocean makes it possible to translate this idea into action. A landlocked country can host Ocean Clubs in its schools, universities, leisure centers, associations and institutions. Its citizens can analyze data, take part in scientific games, contribute to educational programs, support collection campaigns, finance projects, train young people and participate in the global culture of the Ocean.
Thanks to scientific gaming, a child in Geneva, Kigali, Vienna, La Paz, Kathmandu or Budapest can contribute to the analysis of real data on plankton, underwater sounds, pollution or images from sensors. Thanks to Participatory Science, a school located far from the coasts can understand the links between watersheds, climate, consumption, waste, biodiversity and the Ocean. Thanks to open science, local contributions can join a global knowledge system.
Ocean governance then becomes truly universal.
The central role of Participatory Science
Participatory Science plays a major role in this transformation. It enables citizens to contribute to one or more stages of a scientific research project, and it strengthens communities’ capacity to engage in research that is relevant to them. It offers a collaborative, sustainable and inclusive framework, particularly suited to global challenges.
It also makes it possible to produce local data useful for public policy. When a community observes, measures, documents and shares what it sees, it does more than learn. It contributes to knowledge. It becomes a stakeholder in decision-making. It strengthens the legitimacy of public strategies because they can rely on data produced as close as possible to the field.
In the field of the Ocean, this approach is decisive. Data are lacking in many regions. Scientific resources remain concentrated in certain countries. Coastlines, islands, rural areas, estuaries, watersheds and under-documented regions cannot be monitored only through classic scientific campaigns. Observation capacity must be expanded, without weakening scientific quality.
Participatory Science does not replace researchers. It increases their capacity for observation, mobilization and dissemination. It creates a link between knowledge and action. It brings the Ocean into education, citizenship and daily life.
Global Citizen Science Alliance for Ocean: a cross-cutting infrastructure complementary to existing governance frameworks
Within this dynamic, the Global Citizen Science Alliance for Ocean occupies a structuring place.
Alongside the bodies and institutions that collectively govern issues relating to the Ocean, this project contributes to resolving marine crises by proposing a complementary infrastructure for participation, data, education and cooperation.
This infrastructure is based on several complementary elements: Ocean Clubs, collection protocols, open science databases, visualization tools, digital interfaces, scientific gaming mechanisms, educational resources and a Blue Passport making it possible to value participants’ engagement over time.
Its strength is to make possible a global contribution, from the coasts as well as from inland territories. It gives territories a means to observe. It gives citizens a means to contribute. It gives researchers a means to expand collection and analysis. It gives decision-makers a means to access information closer to the field. It gives funders a means to identify more readable projects.
Data as a common language
The governance of Ocean resilience cannot rely only on speeches. It must rely on data, observations, comparisons, indicators and evidence. Without reliable data, there is no steering. Without shared data, there is no trust. Without understandable data, there is no citizen appropriation.
Data therefore becomes a common language.
But this data must be produced methodically. It must be open without being confused. It must be participatory without losing rigor. It must be local while remaining comparable. It must be useful to researchers, but also understandable to educators, local authorities, NGOs, funders and citizens.
That is why the Global Citizen Science Alliance for Ocean cannot be only a network of goodwill. It must be a methodological, scientific and educational architecture. It must connect simple actions in the field to chains of validation, processing, analysis and restitution.
Scientific gaming as an extension of participation
Scientific gaming is one of the most original elements of this approach. It makes it possible to involve audiences that are not physically close to the Ocean, but that can participate in its observation and analysis.
In a world where ocean data are becoming massive, certain tasks remain suited to human intelligence: recognizing shapes, classifying images, comparing signals, detecting anomalies, interpreting patterns. Transformed into playful missions, these tasks make it possible to mobilize large communities of players, pupils, students or citizens.
Participation then becomes possible from any country. It no longer depends only on the beach, the boat, the sensor or the laboratory. It also depends on the capacity to design interfaces that are accessible, useful and scientifically robust.
This is a new way of entering Ocean governance: not only by talking about the Ocean, but by participating directly in the analysis of its data.
Ocean Clubs as local anchors
While gaming makes it possible to broaden participation to the whole world, Ocean Clubs make it possible to anchor it in territories. They can emerge in a school, an association, a university, a leisure center, a holiday camp, a municipality, a museum, a community center or a youth organization.
Their role is simple and essential: to bring a local culture of the Ocean to life. Observe, learn, collect, share, understand, act.
In coastal countries, Ocean Clubs can contribute to field monitoring: waste, biodiversity, water quality, microplastics, visual observations, local climate data. In landlocked countries, they can work on watersheds, water cycles, the impacts of consumption, data analysis, Ocean education and digital participation.
Thus, every country can find its place.
The rights of nature applied to the Ocean
Furthermore, the rise of the rights of nature opens another dimension. It invites us to consider the Ocean no longer only as a space to be managed, a resource to be exploited or a risk to be controlled, but as a living system whose integrity must be defended.
This approach is still emerging at the scale of the global Ocean. It first developed around rivers, forests, mountains or specific ecosystems. But very strongly represented at the 3rd major UN Ocean Conference in 2025 in Nice, it already raises an important question: who can speak on behalf of the Ocean when its balances are threatened?
A governance of Ocean resilience led from and by International Geneva could help examine this question without reducing it to a slogan. The rights of nature need data, evidence, mediation, legal frameworks, institutional carriers and citizen relays. Participatory Science can play a decisive role here, by documenting harm, making transformations visible, and enabling communities to produce useful factual elements.
Toward an Ocean COP
The future Ocean COP represents a possible step in the global political structuring of the subject. It could become the place where States formalize commitments, monitor objectives, coordinate funding and establish priorities.
Its protocol leadership from New York naturally confirms the central role of the United Nations system in the political architecture. But the operational secretariat is still looking for its place of anchoring and several countries have positioned themselves.
What place can host a capacity for operational facilitation? What ecosystem can connect States, international organizations, NGOs, scientists, funders, cities, regions and citizens? What space can complement the political protocol with an implementation capacity?
By playing the card of resilience, impact diplomacy and participatory citizen approaches, Geneva could play an important role here, not to move the political center of the Ocean COP, but to host or support a function of operational coordination, projects, data, impact finance and multi-stakeholder mobilization.
Coastal cities and regions: the level where the Ocean becomes concrete
Coastal cities and regions are called upon to become one of the most important levels of ocean governance. This is where risks manifest themselves. This is where populations experience the effects of erosion, pollution, rising waters, biodiversity loss, tourist pressure or conflicts of use.
But these territories must not be seen only as vulnerable spaces. They are also spaces of innovation. They can test solutions, mobilize schools, structure Ocean Clubs, collect data, develop local policies and share their results with other territories.
A global governance of Ocean resilience must therefore give them a clear place. It must enable them to dialogue with one another, bring up their data, compare their experiences, pool their tools and find funding.
Here again, Geneva can help connect. And the Global Citizen Science Alliance for Ocean can provide a simple infrastructure to produce, compare and value data from these territories, but also to steer reorganizations, resolutions and co-designed actions.
Blue economy and blue finance: making projects readable
The blue economy and blue finance are becoming major fields. They can finance ecosystem restoration, the transition of maritime activities, sustainable fisheries, responsible aquaculture, the adaptation of coastal territories, education, research and innovation.
But one problem remains: many useful projects are not yet readable for investors, philanthropists or financial institutions. They are too scattered, too poorly documented, too difficult to compare, or too insufficiently structured.
This is one of the roles of Global Impact Projects.
They make projects more understandable, more measurable, more governable, and therefore more fundable. In the field of the Ocean, this readability becomes essential. It can make it possible to transform philanthropic, public or private intentions into concrete, monitored, evaluated and replicable operations.
The role of the Geneva Forum
Since 2001, the Geneva Forum has worked to bring together worlds that speak too little to one another: diplomacy, science, education, NGOs, finance, companies, local authorities, international institutions. Its function is not to replace existing organizations, but to create spaces where projects can emerge, be structured, be consolidated and become fundable.
In the field of the Ocean, the Geneva Forum can also play this role of convergence platform. It can help bring together the actors of International Geneva around complementary governance of resilience. It can facilitate the emergence of coalitions. It can host workshops. It can help transform a vision into roadmaps, and roadmaps into concrete projects.
This work is modest in its method, but ambitious in its purpose.
A governance that does not replace, but facilitates and complements
The proposal is therefore ultimately the following.
It is not a matter of competing with the future Ocean COP, nor of replacing existing organizations. It is not a matter of centralizing in Geneva what must remain elsewhere. It is a matter of creating a complementary function, dedicated to resilience, data, projects, citizen participation and impact finance.
Several UN agencies, international organizations and NGOs are directly concerned by this approach at the operational level, but all of them are concerned, whatever the issues they address, because of the incredible cross-cutting nature of questions relating to the Ocean.
This function could very easily be articulated with:
international legal frameworks;
United Nations agencies;
regional governance frameworks;
coastal cities and regions;
scientific coalitions;
blue finance actors;
educational networks;
citizens of all countries.
From Geneva, with the whole world
Geneva will not save the Ocean alone, just as no State, no city, no organization, no coalition will do so alone.
But Geneva can play its role in a supportive and assertive way, by helping and creating links daily and in practice.
It can offer a space of trust and constancy, it can bring around the table actors who do not meet enough. It can help make projects more readable, contribute to connecting science, finance, institutions, territories and citizens. It can host part of this still-missing operational governance.
And above all, it can do so with humility.
The resilience of the Ocean will not depend on a single institution, but on our collective capacity to cooperate, connect and produce. It will require rules, funding, data, projects, committed territories, scientists, citizens, cities, regions, States and international organizations capable of working together over time.
Geneva can play a central role in this dynamic, not because it is on the edge of the Ocean, but because it is at the heart of international relations. It can do what few places can do: transform intentions into projects, and projects into results.
It is in this spirit that the Geneva Forum, as well as the Global Citizen Science Alliance for Ocean, takes its place: governance of resilience, from Geneva, for all countries, and with all citizens.