NGOs are celebrating the entry into force of the United Nations Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement), also widely known as the High Seas Treaty, after decades of work.
The High Seas Treaty officially entered into force on 17 January 2026 after crossing the ratification threshold in September 2025. The Pew Charitable Trusts said the new treaty will finally create a mechanism for the world to preserve two-thirds of the ocean lying outside national borders.
“Two-thirds of the ocean lies outside of all national borders, and the vast majority of those waters are vulnerable to threats like overfishing and pollution. But with the U.N. high seas treaty’s entry into force, that can start to change,” The Pew Charitable Trusts Director of Ocean Governance Liz Karan said in a release. “Nations must now use the treaty’s blueprint to build the necessary institutions, procedures and bodies that will create a solid foundation from which to carry out the agreement’s conservation vision: to create lasting protections for the high seas.”
The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) said the new treaty ends years of the high seas being a blind spot in enforcement, with large fleets capable of fishing in areas with few rules and no accountability.
“The rules-based order has prevailed, and that matters enormously,” EJF CEO and Founder Steve Trent said. “For too long, the high seas have been a free-for-all. Industrial exploitation has raced ahead while protection and enforcement lagged far behind.”
The High Seas Alliance, which advocated for the treaty and pushed for its ratification, also celebrated it finally coming to fruition.
“Whether it’s underwater mountains, deep-sea plains and trenches, the icy polar waters, or the open-ocean highways that migratory species travel, the High Seas are as vital as they are immense. With the High Seas Treaty now coming into force, we finally have the tools to safeguard this extraordinary part of our planet. Protecting it really does mean protecting our future,” High Seas Alliance Director Rebecca Hubbard said.
The High Seas Treaty is the product of 20 years of U.N.-facilitated talks that ultimately culminated in a March 2023 deal to place 30 percent of the world’s oceans into protected areas, inject money into marine conservation, and cover access and use of marine genetic resources. With its entering into force, it will be possible to establish marine protected areas in the high seas, assess the environmental impact of current and future human activities, and support developing countries.
The deal officially opened for ratification in September 2023, and NGOs encouraged countries to sign on to the deal.
Per the agreement, 60 countries would need to ratify the deal for it to enter into force, but by June 2024 just 7 had followed through – Palau, Chile, Belize, Seychelles, Monaco, Mauritius, and the Federated States of Micronesia.
However the United Nations Oceans Conference held in June 2025 helped push things along as 19 more countries signed on, and throughout the remainder of 2025 more ratifications trickled in to push it across the threshold. It now has been ratified by 81 parties and signed by 145 countries.
“The treaty continues to serve as a beacon of hope and demonstrates the power of multilateralism,” The Pew Charitable Trusts Senior Officer Nichola Clark said at the time it was finally fully ratified.
The European Commission called the treaty entering into force a milestone for ocean conservation.
“As co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition on BBNJ, bringing together 46 countries, the E.U. remains strongly committed at the highest political level,” the commission said. “The E.U. and its Member States are currently engaged in preparatory discussions for the first Conference of the Parties (COP) which will take place within a year after the entry into force of the BBNJ Agreement.”
The E.U. said it has pledged to support the implementation of the High Seas Treaty through the EUR 40 million (USD 46 million) E.U. Global Ocean Programme, which was launched at the U.N. Ocean Conference.
Trent called on governments worldwide to cooperate and follow through on the commitments made via the treaty.
“This treaty provides one of the biggest opportunities we have to protect the ocean from those who wish to destroy it for short-term profit, and to end an era of exploitation,” he said. “Governments must move fast and ambitiously to turn commitments into real protections. The high seas are the blue, beating heart of our planet, regulating our climate and underpinning all life on Earth. The moment to act is now, and history will judge whether leaders rose to it.”
