From a distance, an island nation can appear to possess everything: pristine waters, a thriving tourism industry and a strong cultural identity. Its income figures may suggest prosperity.
Fatuma Makame learned to farm seaweed in the shallow water where her parents worked. These days, she grows it farther from shore.
The United Nations 2026 Climate Summit addressed critical strategies to mitigate the compounding impacts of the climate crisis and accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
As Norway undertakes
Vendepunkt, or “Turning Point,” its reflection on the future of Norwegian development policy, it is critical that oceans remain a priority. Donors around the world are running similar audits, deciding which long-term partnerships to keep, and why. Norway has decades of expertise to offer, but also something significant at stake: healthy and well-governed oceans underpin food, livelihoods and economic activity in partner countries while supporting global seafood supply chains in which Norway itself participates.
After decades in which the high seas were too often treated as a distant frontier—vast, ownerless and beyond meaningful protection—the High Seas Treaty entered into force on 17 January 2026.
Among the three of us, we have 15 decades of high-level experience in climate science, policies and actions, and we have never been more alarmed than we are at this moment. The United Nations has just
officially declared that
the world has failed in limiting global warming to a safe level. During the last decade, heat-trapping pollutants nearly
doubled the rate that heat is being added to the planet—a rate that will push temperatures across the 1.5°Celsius threshold in five years or less and breach the first barrier of the Paris Agreement. This will further destabilize natural climate systems and amplify weather extremes, which are already costing the world economy more than
$ 2 trillion annually. At the current rate of warming, the global temperature is likely to cross 2° Celsius in
about 15 years, the outer limit of the Paris Agreement, taking us into a climate not witnessed by homo sapiens, ever.
There is an older wisdom, quieter than the noise of our times, that whispers a simple truth: we are not the architects of nature, only its guests. Long before there were nations, economies, or even language, there was the pulse of the tide, the patience of coral, the breath of forests exchanging air with the sky. Into that ancient conversation we arrived — late, curious, and forgetful — mistaking our cleverness for sovereignty and our tools for wings.
India is ranked the second-largest fish-producing nation globally, accounting for around 8 percent of global output. The fisheries sector in India accounts for nearly 7.43 percent of Agricultural Gross Value Added (GVA), the highest (independent) share among the agriculture and allied sectors.
Across this vast ocean, the latest monitoring by Mercator Ocean International shows marine heatwave conditions ranging from moderate to severe. At the same time, the World Meteorological Organization expects a strong El Niño to intensify through August to October, with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole also likely to develop. These are not distant scientific signals. They are an urgent warning that the ocean system on which millions depend is under mounting stress.
For generations, Pacific children have grown up with the ocean as part of everyday life. It is where families fish, where stories are passed down, where livelihoods begin and where cultures are rooted.
Indigenous communities have long advocated for the environment through the lens of their traditional knowledge systems and cultures. But much more work needs to be done to translate their presence into influence.
I have spent my life on an island. From the granite hills of Mahé, one can watch the sun rise over an ocean that has fed, protected and defined the Seychellois people for centuries.
Earlier this year, I called publicly for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining, arguing that it is not a rejection of progress, but a commitment to sound science.
Every morning, as the Indian Ocean retreats from the reef off Zanzibar's Jambiani village, Chiku Chande steps into the knee-deep lagoon carrying bundles of seaweed seedlings. Years of farming these waters have taught her about every channel and coral outcrop. But lately, the corals that once glowed in brown and gold have become chalky white.
For most of the Eighth Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Assembly last month, the atmosphere inside Samarkand’s sprawling Congress Centre echoed a growing confidence of global environmental policymakers.
Monsoon season in South Asia, including Nepal, is a period of frequent rainfall, extreme heat, and a busy time of the year for farmers. Most farmers in Nepal depend on monsoon rain to plant paddey, the main source of food.
In just the first half of this year, Abu Dhabi’s Environment Agency has cultivated 302,415 new coral colonies, bringing the total under the Abu Dhabi Coral Gardens Project to around 1.8 million – a scale of restoration that demands global attention.
On the night of 29 June 1976, just before midnight, I stood among my fellow Seychellois at the heart of a moment that would change our history forever.
As the afternoon sun casts a golden glow over Mukwiro village on Wasini Island on Kenya’s Indian Ocean South Coast, Mwanasiti Mwalola, 26 and Mzungu Mohammed Dhossa, 45, stand at the community fish landing site, carefully receiving baskets of freshly caught fish from returning fishers. A weighing scale hangs before them, with a pen and notebook in their hands; the two have one duty: to collect data on the stock being delivered by artisanal fishers.
« James Alix Michel warns that without real finance and precaution, ocean pledges risk remaining only on paper. »
Now that the lights have dimmed in Mombasa and the delegations have gone home, a simple but necessary question remains: did the first Our Ocean Conference on African soil truly move the world from promises to protection? The conference was indeed the first held in Africa, under the theme “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future,” with a stated focus on culture, communities, livelihoods, marine protection, climate resilience and sustainable blue economies.
Tomorrow, Africa hosts the Our Ocean Conference on its own shores for the first time, in Mombasa.
This is more than a diplomatic milestone. It is a test of whether we, as Africans, are prepared to safeguard our ocean as a shared heritage and a pillar of our future prosperity.