A European Oceans Pact to Enhance Ocean Governance

The Oceans Pact, together with the European Green Deal (EGD) aims to promote and ensure sustainable use and protection of the oceans and the prosperity of EU’s coastal communities. The EGD provides an important basis with strong sustainability objectives for accelerating ocean energy, decarbonizing shipping and ports, expanding marine biodiversity protection, reducing pollution, and advancing sustainable blue food production. The marine social scientific consortia of three Horizon Europe (HE) funded projects (PERMAGOV, CrossGov and BlueGreen Governance) welcome the initiative of the Oceans Pact’s objectives for healthy and productive oceans. As established in the EGD, there is a need to work towards ambitious sustainability goals to address the multiple interrelated crises affecting the marine environment, specifically climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. The three project consortia emphasize the need to study and address the institutional and regulatory challenges that come from a fragmented ocean governance system in implementing these ambitious EGD policy objectives. Overcoming these barriers is crucial for a coherent and integrated governance approach to our oceans. As such, the European scientific consortia implementing the three projects in particular agree with the Oceans Pact’s ambition to develop a single reference framework for all oceanrelated policies.