Progress Report
The OOC can play an important role in convening diverse partnerships and mobilizing action and investment to meet this need. However, making commitments alone is not enough. Commitment-makers must continue to follow through and complete their “in progress” commitments, especially those associated with large financial pledges, alongside rapidly disbursing the $24.9 billion in pledged funds that currently sit in “not started” commitments.
Effectiveness of Voluntary Commitment Mechanisms
Voluntary mechanisms such as the OOC commitment process, while imperfect, have a valuable role in the ocean policy space. They present a more flexible tool to encourage ocean action and engagement, especially from governments and organizations that lack capacity to use more rigid legal mechanisms. At the same time, voluntary mechanisms cannot be a replacement for legally binding environmental agreements (Brown Weiss 2014). They must work in conjunction to support and strengthen these negotiated outcomes, particularly for agreements approaching entry into force like the BBNJ Agreement and the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, and the anticipated legally binding instrument on marine plastic pollution.
The relatively high self-reporting rate (66 percent) found in this analysis is believed to be associated with the higher levels of direct outreach and engagement by host countries to commitment-makers. Increased reporting is also supported by the singular focus of OOCs on commitments, rather than political outcomes or negotiations. Typically, announcing new commitments or providing substantive updates on existing commitments has been a prerequisite for countries and organizations seeking high-level involvement at the conference.
A Sustainable Future for the Ocean is Possible with Ambition Across All Regions and Sectors
Going forward, there are clear opportunities for the OOC to continue to grow and meaningfully drive ocean action. The following short-to-medium-term recommendations can be addressed by future host governments and the OOC Secretariat to improve outcomes at upcoming conferences:
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Actively fill geographic and policy gaps in OOC commitments.
Dedicated outreach is required to close geographic disparities in OOC commitments, particularly in the Indian, Arctic, and Southern ocean basins. Likewise, efforts can be made to scale up finance for relatively under-resourced action areas, noting their different financial needs. This can be achieved by doing the following:
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- Engaging proactively with governments and organizations in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia to encourage broader representation and inclusion in the OOC agenda, with a particular focus on SIDS and LDCs.
- Prioritizing the African, Middle Eastern, and Caribbean regions to host future conferences given the important role hosts play in setting the global ocean agenda and prioritizing areas of action.
- Encouraging a greater focus on financing for fisheries and aquaculture, MPAs, marine pollution, and maritime security in commitments.
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Strengthen partnerships with governments while scaling engagement with nongovernmental sectors.
National governments stand out as the main entity making commitments and driving successful long-term implementation. The OOC can continue to push for increased ambition from governments while seeking new partnerships and action from a broader range of actors. This can be achieved by doing the following:
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- Building longer-term partnerships with NGOs and civil society organizations, especially smaller NGOs and underrepresented groups. Sustained participation from these demographics can promote greater equity in ocean outcomes and commitments that respond to and are shaped by the needs of local communities.
- Increasing engagement with the private sector and international financial institutions to foster greater finance mobilization and partnerships. Priority organizations include development banks; maritime transport, tourism, and ocean energy firms; actors within aquatic food value chains; and plastic producers and waste management firms.
- Encouraging academic institutions to mobilize commitments focused on data- and knowledge-sharing, capacity-building, and research. Further commitment-monitoring initiatives also present opportunities to engage subject matter experts across the OOC framework.
- Seeking greater participation from intergovernmental organizations, including regional fishery management organizations, regional seas organizations and conventions, and intergovernmental bodies. Incorporating them into the OOC process can promote collective action by member states and accelerate global ocean policy progress.
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Improve the commitment process and functionality of the OOC online platform.
This analysis was limited by varying data quality and consistency. Modernizing and improving usability of the OOC platform could ease commitment-making, reporting, and monitoring for hosts and users. In part, this can be achieved by doing the following:
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- Updating the commitments platform to include the new variables generated for this paper (ocean basin, optional secondary action area, differentiation of pledged versus delivered funds), and preventing commitment-makers from overriding previous data. These changes would improve transparency and accountability and enable more comprehensive and accurate analysis.
- Providing user training and guidance on the commitments process and enforcing minimum “SMART” commitment requirements. This would ensure that new commitments are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timebound, and include financial information where possible.
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- The following strategic recommendations could improve the longer-term positioning, sustainability, and legacy of the OOC:4
Provide concrete support for organizations to implement their commitments.
With increased institutionalization of the OOC process through the Secretariat, it is possible to explore how the OOC could better support commitment-makers in implementing action. This can include the following:
- Convenings that can build partnerships among commitment-makers and subject matter experts to share successes and challenges during implementation.
- Strengthening partnerships with funding and philanthropic organizations to support commitment finance mobilization.
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Increase coordination among the OOC and other multilateral forums, including UNOC, to address duplication risk across voluntary commitment platforms.
Although the current commitment duplication rate between OOC and UNOC commitments is estimated to be only 13.4 percent (Chan 2024), this fraction may grow over time, especially if conferences are held in the same year. Efforts to address this can include the following:
- Coordinating and differentiating policy priorities for each voluntary commitment process.
Future research directions
As discussed, analysis of OOC commitment impact is limited by its design as a voluntary, self-reported system. Moving beyond intermediate outcomes to assess the comprehensive impacts of commitments on broader ocean health indicators would require significant funding and increased capacity, beyond the scope of the current OOC Secretariat. A concrete global impact assessment would require verified evidence of individual commitment completion and a consolidated impact monitoring framework.
However, four potential research opportunities are proposed for follow-up:
The outcomes of the OOC thus far—over 1,000 completed actions and more than $24 billion of ocean finance delivered—indicate that voluntary commitments, coupled with enabling conditions to support their implementation, can be important contributors to the health and sustainability of our ocean. With an upcoming 2030 deadline to meet SDG 14 and conserve 30 percent of the global ocean, the OOC—both in its track record of success and the areas in which it has opportunities to grow—has a key role to play in continuing to drive ambition for our ocean.
