By Kizito Makoye
NICE, France, Jun 12 2025 – Once cast as a culprit of ocean degradation, the global shipping industry is quietly reshaping its image—with experts now betting on it as a key ally in saving our seas.

Transporting more than 80 percent of global trade and generating over USD 930 billion annually, shipping is often perceived as an invisible force behind the products we use daily. But at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, industry leaders and scientists gathered to ask a provocative question: Can shipping be part of the solution to the ocean’s mounting crises?

For Dr. Wendy Watson-Wright, Chair of the UN Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP), the answer is nuanced.

“If I could start with my usual rant—just a reminder that there is only one global ocean. Just as there’s no Planet B, there is no spare ocean,” she said, stressing that climate change, marine pollution, and invasive species are the most urgent threats facing ocean health today.

From her perspective, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the broader shipping sector are not standing still. “The IMO and maritime sector have been working to address many of these issues,” she explained, citing actions against marine plastic litter, biofouling, and greenhouse gas emissions. “GESAMP provides authoritative, independent scientific advice to support the protection of the marine environment. Our strength is our independence—and that we bring emerging issues to the table before they hit the headlines.”

Indeed, one of shipping’s major breakthroughs, the IMO’s Ballast Water Management Convention, was born out of scientific assessments provided by GESAMP. The convention aims to stem the tide of invasive aquatic species transferred between ecosystems via ships’ ballast tanks—waters that are taken on in one port to stabilize ships and released in another, often with unintended ecological consequences.

“Invasive species can devastate marine ecosystems when they’re introduced into environments without natural predators,” said Watson-Wright. “Once they’re established, you can’t get rid of them.”

A Friend, Not a Foe

Simon Doran, Chair of the Global Industry Alliance for Marine Biosafety, admitted that shipping has not always been viewed kindly in environmental circles—but he believes the tides are turning.

“The perception out there was that the maritime industry was the villain. But today, shipping has the opportunity to be the good guy,” said Doran. “Shipping contributes only 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—and we are on track to reduce that further. With IMO incentives and decarbonization goals, shipping will become net-zero. It would be good if other industries followed our lead.”

Doran pointed to the Ballast Water Convention as a success story, explaining how it compelled shipping companies to invest in new technologies that reduce the risk of alien species wreaking havoc on local ecosystems. “That was the first step. The next will be stronger policies and broader adoption of sustainable practices.”

Yet, the road to transformation is not without hurdles.

“The two biggest barriers are regulatory uncertainty and high commercial costs,” said Doran. “That’s where partnerships like the Global Industry Alliance come in—we bring together businesses, from coating firms to shipping operators, to share solutions and push for standards that make sustainability feasible.”

Bringing Developing Nations Onboard

Gyorgyi Gurban, Head of Project Implementation at the IMO, emphasized that while regulations are essential, the organization is equally focused on ensuring these policies are implemented—especially in developing countries.

“We are not just regulators; we are partners in implementation,” said Gurban. “We have growing portfolios of ocean-related projects in areas like ship recycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and marine litter.”

Gurban rejected the notion that shipping is a niche sector. “Shipping has always been central to global trade and sustainable development. While most of the companies may be headquartered in developed countries, the biggest ports and trade routes run through the Global South,” she said. “Developing countries have much to gain from shipping’s green transition—they could become providers of alternative fuels or hubs for sustainable port services.”

To that end, the IMO is working closely with governments and communities in developing nations to build capacity, transfer technology, and support local infrastructure.

“Our approach is twofold,” she explained. “International regulations apply to all ships, regardless of the flag they fly. But we also back this up with technical cooperation projects so that developing countries can effectively implement these rules.”

The Science-Policy Nexus

For Watson-Wright, the key to unlocking shipping’s potential lies in science-led policymaking.

“Everywhere you turn at this conference, people are talking about the importance of evidence-based decision-making,” she noted. “That’s music to my ears.”

Founded in 1969, GESAMP has long been the scientific conscience of the marine world, producing independent assessments that feed into UN policy debates. Its members, chosen for their expertise and not their nationality, provide unvarnished scientific input to nine UN agencies, including the IMO.

“Our advice must be authoritative and independent,” said Watson-Wright. “That’s what gives it strength.”

A Sector at a Crossroads

Despite the momentum, shipping’s journey toward sustainability is far from over. From decarbonization to digitalization and waste management, the sector must navigate a complex web of challenges.

But for Gurban, that’s precisely what makes the moment ripe for action.

“Shipping isn’t just about moving goods—it’s about enabling livelihoods, supporting economies, and now, safeguarding the ocean,” she said. “By linking robust regulation, cutting-edge science, and inclusive implementation, we can turn this global industry into a global solution.”

Backed by science and bolstered by international cooperation, shipping may not just carry goods across the seas—it could also help carry the world toward a more sustainable blue future.

“Shipping is no longer the villain,” said Doran. “We’re ready to be the hero the ocean needs.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

By Cecilia Russell
NICE, Jun 12 2025 – Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Feleti Teo, describes himself as an optimist—despite the existential crisis his atoll nation faces with climate change-induced sea level rise and frustration with existing international financial mechanisms to fund adaptation and mitigation.

The 3rd UN Ocean Conference was a success, he told a press conference today, June 12. At the beginning of the week, he ratified an agreement under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) and was also now party to the FAO’s international agreement to specifically target illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing—Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA).

These agreements were crucial.

“The ocean is everything to us—a source of protein, income, and fisheries. It represents  40 percent of the domestic budget. It plays a vital role,” Teo said. But it is a double-edged sword because it also represents the greatest threat because of climate change-induced sea level rise, which for the atoll nation means that more than 50 percent of the country will be regularly inundated by tidal surges by 2050.

So, he needs to contemplate services for the needs of his people in a region where there is no scenario of moving to higher ground—because there isn’t any.

Tuvalu is “totally flat.”

Teo said USD 40-million had been spent on the country’s flagship Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project, known as TK of which phase one was completed.

But behind the small success was a clear sense of frustration.

“The coastal adaptation projects will continue into the future,” Teo said. “But it is a very expensive exercise.

Feleti Teo, Prime Minister of Tuvalu, addresses the media at UNOC3. Credit: SPC

He made a quiet plea to development partners and financing mechanisms to be responsive.

“I’ve always urged or requested our development partners and our international financing mechanisms to be able to be more forthcoming in terms of providing the necessary climate financing that we need for us to be able to adapt and give us more time to continue to live in the land that we believe God has given us,” Teo said.

But he later admitted that the frustration with the Loss and Damage Fund and other climate financing mechanisms meant that applications could take as many as eight years to complete. This led to his Pacific partners establishing the Pacific Resilience Facility that would allow the Pacific to invest in small, grant-based but high-impact projects to make communities disaster-ready.

Teo said the UNOC3 had given them an opportunity to articulate their concerns, and he hoped that the states participating in the conference had listened to them.

“We don’t have that influence—except to continue to tell our story.”

The Pacific French Summit was a particular highlight and he believed that French President Emmanuel Macron had the region at heart.

IPS UN Bureau Report

By Kizito Makoye
NICE, France, Jun 12 2025 – Just before dawn, the worn wooden dhows begin gliding toward the shore at Magogoni fish market in Tanzania’s port city of Dar es Salaam. Their tattered sails flutter against the orange sky. Exhausted fishers step out onto the muddy sand, hauling frayed nets and plastic crates, their sun-creased faces tight with fatigue.

The Magogoni scene — women wrapped in colourful khanga bargaining over a modest catch, children darting between upturned buckets, and the pungent smell of raw sewage pouring into the sea through a rusted pipe — doesn’t deter anyone.

It is a struggle for survival for thousands of small-scale fishers who rely on the Indian Ocean to put food on their families’ dinner tables.

Yet today, one certain thing emerges.

More than 7,000 kilometres away in the French Riviera, global leaders, marine scientists, and policymakers gathered this week for the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference. The conference saw the launch of the Review of the State of World Marine Fishery Resources by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The report laid bare the crisis confronting the world’s oceans — and sounded a dire warning for fisher communities in Tanzania who rely on the sea to eke out a living.

According to the FAO, just 47.4 percent of fish stocks in the Eastern Central Atlantic are currently fished at sustainable levels. The rest are either overexploited or facing collapse, pushed to the brink by climate change, weak governance, and a lack of data.

“We now have the clearest picture ever of the state of marine fisheries,” FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu told delegates. “The next step is clear: governments must scale up what works and act with urgency.”

For fishers like Daudi Kileo (51), who has spent decades at sea, that urgency is overdue. “We don’t get enough catch these days, but we keep working hard,” he told IPS by phone all the way from Dar es Salaam; dragging a nearly empty net across the sand is disheartening, he said.

In Tanzania, most fishers operate informally. Their boats lack sensors or licences. Their harvests go unrecorded. There are no quotas, no conservation enforcement, and little training on sustainable practices. Each night, they sail into deep waters hoping to return with enough to make ends meet — increasingly, they don’t.

“Sometimes we come back with less than we need to feed our children,” Kileo says. “But we do not have a choice.”

While fishing  communities in Tanzania  are battling overfishing and declining catches, other parts of the world point to a different future. In Port Lympia, Nice’s harbour, the wafting air carries no pungent smell to disturb visiting dignitaries. Small boats bob idly; many seem to be ferrying tourists instead of chasing fish. It is a glimpse into what can be achieved when policies favour protection over exploitation and when economies evolve beyond extraction.

“There’s a future where the ocean can feed us sustainably,” said Professor Manuel Barange, Director of the FAO Fisheries Division. “But it requires deep, structural change — and fast.”

Leisure boats at Port Lympia, Nice, where the UNOC3 is being held. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

Central to that change is the FAO’s Blue Transformation initiative, an ambitious strategy aimed at transforming aquatic food systems through sustainable practices, robust governance, and inclusion. The plan targets improved monitoring, ethical fishing practices, and expansion of responsible aquaculture while combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing — a major threat to fragile ecosystems and vulnerable communities.

However, turning that vision into reality in low-income countries like Tanzania remains a monumental challenge.

“We don’t have the tools or the support,” says Yahya Mgawe, a researcher at the Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute. “The fishers are many, our data is patchy, and enforcement is weak. We are falling behind,” he told IPS in Nice.

The consequences are  dire. Tanzania’s fisheries sector employs more than 180,000 people, the vast majority in small-scale operations. Fish provide not only income but vital nutrition, especially in rural areas. Yet as climate change alters fish migration and breeding patterns, and as competition intensifies in overfished waters, traditional knowledge is no longer enough to sustain livelihoods.

“Everything is shifting,” says Nancy Iraba a  marine ecologist at the University of Dar es Salaam. “Species that were once common are disappearing. Fish are getting smaller. And the time and effort fishers must invest is increasing, with diminishing returns.”

The FAO report highlights that in regions with better regulation and investment in science — such as the Northeast Pacific — over 90 percent of fish stocks are harvested sustainably. These gains, experts say, come from stringent quotas, real-time data collection, and cooperation across borders.

But in Africa and other parts of the Global South, the disparity is widening.

“The fishers of Tanzania are not the cause of ocean depletion,” says Iraba. “But they are among the first to pay the price.”

Recognising this injustice, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu used the conference platform to champion small-scale fishers as “guardians of biodiversity” and crucial actors in global food security. He urged countries to include them in decision-making processes and policy implementation.

“Fishers are not just producers,” Dongyu said. “They are nutrition providers and economic anchors in coastal societies. Transformation must be environmental, social, and economic — all at once.”

He also made a call to invest in youth participation, noting that as the global population nears 10 billion, young people must be empowered to innovate within the marine sector. “They must be leaders, not just observers,” he emphasised.

Yet progress remains slow. While sustainable fishery landings now represent 82.5 percent of global totals — a modest improvement — the share of overfished stocks globally still stands at 35.4 percent. And despite ambitious global targets to protect 30% of marine areas by 2030, only 2.7% of oceans are currently effectively protected.

The financial gap is just as wide. Experts estimate that up to USD 175 billion a year is needed to achieve sustainable fisheries transformation, but pledges remain far short of that figure.

As the conference concludes on Friday, FAO marked its 80th anniversary and 30 years of the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries with a renewed push for innovation, including a new recognition programme for responsible aquaculture.

“Effective management is the best conservation,” Dongyu reminded delegates. “Our oceans, rivers, and lakes can help feed the world — but only if we use their resources responsibly, sustainably, and equitably.”

Back in Dar es Salaam, the boats of Magogoni are already being readied for another night. The sun rises higher, casting long shadows across the fish-streaked sand.

“We hear empty talk of big meetings and policies all the time,” says Kileo. “But nobody comes here to ask us how we survive. Nobody helps us when the fish disappear.”

His words hang in the salty air, a quiet reminder that unless the voices of small-scale fishers are included in the global vision for sustainable seas, the transformation may leave the most vulnerable behind.

IPS UN Bureau Report

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jun 12 2025 (IPS-Partners)

As we mark today’s World Day Against Child Labour, we must confront an urgent global truth: over 160 million children around the world are engaged in child labour – many of them in the most dangerous, degrading and life-limiting conditions imaginable. These are children forced to work in fields, factories and conflict zones – deprived of their right to safety, to dignity and, above all, to an education.

At Education Cannot Wait (ECW), we know that education is the single most powerful tool we have to break this cycle of poverty, exploitation and lost potential. Education offers children worldwide a pathway to a better life: a life where their dreams, not their circumstances, define their future.

In crisis-affected contexts, where children are most at risk, access to quality education is truly a lifeline – shielding girls and boys from violence, forced labour, child marriage, trafficking and other atrocities.

Together, we are doing something about it. Delivered with our strategic donor partners, ECW’s investments have already reached over 11 million children and adolescents in crisis settings. This is an investment in an end to child labour, an end to unfair working conditions, an end to cycles of poverty, displacement, violence and chaos.

This global crisis demands global action. We must increase financing for education in emergencies and protracted crises, strengthen child protection systems, and empower communities to keep children – especially girls and boys living on the frontlines of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises – safe and in school.

ECW calls on world leaders, donors, civil society and the private sector to unite in solidarity and take bold, collective action. Every dollar invested in education is an investment in sustainable economic development, global security and resilient societies. Every dollar invested in education is an investment to end child labour – now and forever.

Let us act with urgency. Let us act with compassion. And let us act with the unwavering belief that every child – regardless of who they are or where they live – has the right to a quality education and the freedom to learn, grow and thrive.

Excerpt:

World Day Against Child Labour Statement by Education Cannot Wait Executive Director Yasmine Sherif

By the Peace Research Institute Oslo
OSLO, Norway, Jun 12 2025 – The world is experiencing a surge in violence not seen since the post-World War II era. 2024 marked a grim new record: the highest number of state-based armed conflicts in over seven decades.

A staggering 61 conflicts were recorded across 36 countries last year, according to PRIO’s Conflict Trends: A Global Overview report. “This is not just a spike – it’s a structural shift. The world today is far more violent, and far more fragmented, than it was a decade ago,” warned Siri Aas Rustad, Research Director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and lead author of the report.

“Now is not the time for the United States – or any global power – to retreat from international engagement. Isolationism in the face of rising global violence would be a profound mistake with long-term human life consequences.”

The report is based on data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. It shows that while the number of battle-related deaths in 2024 held steady at approximately 129,000 – matching the devastating toll of 2023 – this level of violence was far above the average for the past three decades. 2024 was the fourth most deadly year since the Cold War ended in 1989.

Two major wars dominated the battlefield: Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine claimed an estimated 76,000 lives, while the war in Gaza killed 26,000. But these headline conflicts are only part of the picture. What is increasingly alarming is the multiplication of conflicts within individual countries.

More than half of all conflict-affected states now face two or more separate state-based conflicts, which are internal conflicts where the government is one of the warring parties. In nine countries, there were three or more state-based conflicts.

This reflects a deepening complexity in global conflict dynamics – where state fragility, transnational actors and local grievances feed into overlapping crises that are harder to contain, let alone resolve.

“Conflicts are no longer isolated. They’re layered, transnational and increasingly difficult to end,” said Rustad. “It is a mistake to assume the world can look away. Whether under President Trump or any future administration, abandoning global solidarity now would mean walking away from the very stability the U.S. helped build after 1945.”

The data also identified a rise in militant group activity as a key driver of new and sustained violence. While the Islamic State (IS) remained active in at least 12 countries, other groups like Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) expanded its footprint. JNIM operated in five West African countries in 2024.

Africa remained the most conflict-affected region last year, with 28 state-based conflicts recorded, nearly double the number from a decade earlier. Asia followed with 17, the Middle East with 10, Europe with 3 and the Americas with 2.

“Our analysis shows that the global security landscape is not improving, it’s fracturing. And without sustained international engagement, the risks to civilians, regional stability and international order will only deepen,” warned Rustad.

• Click here to download the whole PRIO report, Conflict Trends: A Global Overview, 1946-2024.

IPS UN Bureau