UN Ocean Conference in Nice
From June 9 to 13, 2025, representatives from 130 countries meet in Nice to discuss the protection of the oceans.
Protecting life under water
Representatives from all over the world are currently meeting in Nice to discuss the future of the oceans. The UN Ocean Conference is the most important international summit for marine conservation and serves, among other things, to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 14 – which aims to protect marine life and conserve oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
Two years after the conclusion of the UN Convention on the Protection of the High Seas, the focus is now on its implementation. The world’s oceans are currently facing many challenges, including global warming and acidification of the water, increasing plastic pollution, overfishing and deep-sea mining. These problems are to be discussed in Nice and both financial pledges and political commitments are to be initiated.
The Environment Minister in Nice
The German government and Environment Minister Carsten Schneider are focusing on three issues in Nice: limiting plastic waste, designating marine protected areas on the high seas and a precautionary pause in deep-sea mining.
Currently, 46% of Germany’s marine area is already designated as protected areas. The German Federal Minister for the Environment, Carsten Schneider, emphasizes that he wants to improve the quality of German marine protected areas. With a view to the EU’s goal of protecting 10% of the marine area so that nature can develop there undisturbed.
Plastic pollution as a key issue
It is now well known that plastic can be found in all areas and depths of the oceans and has a major impact on marine life. Fish mistake it for food and choke on it, it breaks down into microplastics and builds up over centuries. Microplastic particles have also been detected in drinking water and the air – humans inevitably ingest them, they accumulate in human organs and it is currently unclear what health effects microplastics have on the body.
The causes of marine littering are man-made. Only around 14% of plastic is recycled worldwide – the rest ends up in incinerators, landfill sites or directly in the environment and ultimately in the oceans.
At the conference in Nice, the states want to prepare for the negotiations on an international plastics agreement, which will enter a new round in August. However, the environmental organization Greenpeace is critical of the fact that states have so far refused to hold companies accountable for reducing the massive production of plastic.
