The initial focus of this pillar is mapping existing ocean regimes and institutions that address critical issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution—including plastic pollution—on both global and regional scales, particularly in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This mapping is crucial for understanding the unique mandates and institutional structures of these regimes, as well as identifying potential areas for reform.

Research tasks under this pillar encompass several key activities,  including exploring legal theories and philosophical perspectives on the interactions between regional and international regimes and institutions. It will also assess how specific provisions and mechanisms outlined in the BBNJ Agreement might interface with current mechanisms and approaches that address significant environmental and social issues.

Furthermore, the research will examine multi-sectoral governance and stewardship in pilot areas, such as the Sargasso Sea, the Costa Rica Thermal Dome, and the Salas y Gómez and Nazca Ridges, along with other selected locations in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. This analysis aims to identify and propose models for implementing area-based regulatory tools for regions beyond national jurisdiction.

Non-state actors play a crucial role in implementation and compliance, serving as key drivers in steering ocean governance efforts toward pressing social issues they identify. The BBNJ Agreement is the first law of the sea instrument that explicitly recognized the rights of non-State actors and provided the framework to design mechanisms to engage them in the protection and preservation of areas beyond national jurisdiction.

This pillar advances the interests and knowledge of non-traditional actors in the development and implementation of ocean governance frameworks to tackle the triple planetary crisis by providing dedicated approaches to promoting their participation at national, regional and international levels. It seeks to build an equitable global partnership through the creation of new levels of cooperation among States, stakeholders, key sectors of societies, and people, to achieve a transformed relationship between humanity and the ocean.

Co-Designing a Future Blueprint for Ocean Observation Technologies to Combat the Triple Planetary Crisis

There is a pressing need to harmonize international standards governing ocean observation technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). This need derives from the absence of a structured international framework to keep pace with emerging technologies. The problem requires consideration of existing and future rules that pertain to technological products, procedures, and operations of robotics and AI to tackle the triple planetary crisis. This pillar aims to unlock the full potential of emerging ocean observation technologies and AI to combat this crisis, while at the same time exploring social issues associated with advanced AI technologies that are currently the subject of widespread global debate.

This pillar plays a central role regarding   high-level intergovernmental and United Nations Initiatives that will propel thinking about the future of ocean governance and its interconnections with pressing economic and social issues over this fifty year span. A key focus is investigating and solving an important strand of the Future Ocean Programme, which is the absence of an appropriate forum to mediate ocean governance advice within UN system bodies. Research under this pillar will include identifying the factors necessary to establish the proposed IPOS while building on previous work undertaken with the support of The Nippon Foundation. It will also contribute to UN planning processes for designing and funding governance arrangements emerging under the BBNJ Agreement. Additionally, this pillar will generate knowledge using methodologies from future studies, political economy, and law to model desirable ocean governance futures—and anticipate those that must be avoided.