• The high-level 2025 United Nations Conference to Support the Implementation of SDG 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development (the 2025 UN Ocean Conference) will be co-hosted by France and Costa Rica and held in Nice, France from June 9-13.

• The overarching theme of the Conference is “Accelerating action and mobilising all actors to conserve and sustainably use the ocean”. 

• The Conference aims to support further and urgent action to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development and identify further ways and means to support the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14. 

• It will build on existing instruments to form successful partnerships towards the swift conclusion and effective implementation of ongoing processes that contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of the ocean.

• The Conference will involve all relevant stakeholders, bringing together governments, the United Nations system, intergovernmental organisations, international financial institutions, other interested international bodies, non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations, academic institutions, the scientific community, the private sector, philanthropic organisations, Indigenous Peoples and local communities and other actors to assess challenges and opportunities relating to, as well as actions taken towards, the implementation of Goal 14.

• The Conference will build on the previous UN Ocean Conferences, hosted by Sweden and Fiji in 2017 in New York and by Portugal and Kenya in 2022 in Lisbon.

• The ocean is suffocating due to rising temperatures, rampant acidification, erosion of biodiversity, plastic invasion, predatory fishing.

• The Conference will bring together stakeholders around a single goal: to halt the silent collapse of the planet's largest, and arguably most vital, ecosystem.

• France hopes to make the conference a turning point and the goal “is to produce a Nice Agreement that is pro-oceans, as the Paris Agreement 10 years ago now was for the climate”.

• This agreement will take the form of a Nice Action Plan for the Ocean.  

• A slogan promoted by Costa Rica seems to sum up the spirit of the summit: “Five days. One ocean. One unique opportunity.” 

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