“Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what your values are” — President Joseph R. Biden
The 10th Our Ocean conference ended on April 30, 2025 and touted its success in securing 277 new ocean conservation commitments totaling $9.1 billion in pledged support across the conference’s areas of action. Despite the primacy of 30×30 — the global effort to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030 — only 1% of the pledged funding was directed towards Marine Protected Areas.
46 commitments totaling $118 million were pledged towards marine protected areas this year. The attendees pledged $1.15 billion for Sustainable Fishing — an amount 10x larger than those for marine protected areas. The list of commitments is not yet posted to the conference website, but the slow pace of 30×30 makes a lot of sense when you consider the disparity in resources provided to sustainable fisheries versus protected areas.
Meanwhile, the commitments for the Blue Economy were 50x larger than this year’s commitments for marine protected areas. While these are just a few data points, it reveals some difficult truths. There is a lot of scientific data that shows the conservation efforts that receive funding and staffing are the ones that are successful. Marine protected areas are not receiving the levels of support that are needed to achieve 30×30.
