The high seas have a treaty.
Now comes the work.
The treaty is in force. The machinery is still being built.
The High Seas Treaty’s 2026 rules are in force. What the first COP must decide about protected areas, research benefits and impact reviews.
The BBNJ Agreement entered into force on January 17, 2026. Its first Conference of the Parties is scheduled for January 11–22, 2027, at United Nations headquarters in New York. That leaves an important interval between the legal starting gun and the first meeting of the treaty’s governing body. The UN’s current conference notice confirms those dates; January is not simply an aspirational deadline.
The UN depositary record, dated October 26, lists 104 parties and 145 signatories. Those are different measures, not competing estimates. The United States appears as a signatory from September 20, 2023, without a ratification entry. Signing is not the same as becoming a party. Nor should the tally be described as 104 national ratifications: the record includes different forms of consent to be bound and the European Union.
For readers trying to judge progress, the most useful question is therefore no longer whether enough governments have joined to activate the agreement. It is whether the new system can connect four functions: sharing benefits from marine genetic resources, establishing area-based conservation measures, assessing environmental impacts, and expanding the ability of developing countries to participate. A weakness in one can limit the others.
First, draw the legal map correctly
The treaty covers areas beyond national jurisdiction: the high seas and the international seabed Area. It does not turn national exclusive economic zones into international protected waters. Article 5 preserves states’ rights, jurisdiction, and duties under the Law of the Sea Convention, including those concerning exclusive economic zones and continental shelves. The certified treaty text, Articles 1 and 5, is more precise than the convenient shorthand “High Seas Treaty.”
That distinction matters because water and seabed boundaries are not always interchangeable. Continental-shelf rights may extend beyond 200 nautical miles, while the waters above can have a different legal status. A conservation proposal needs a defensible geographic description, not just a large blue polygon on a world map. Coastal communities and neighboring states also have interests in impacts that travel across boundaries even when an activity begins beyond national jurisdiction.
Likewise, an image of deep water does not establish the legal jurisdiction of the place it depicts. The archival research photographs in this article illustrate the kinds of sampling, observation, equipment, and habitats relevant to implementation. They do not document a BBNJ mission, a newly designated treaty reserve, or an October 2026 enforcement operation. Several come from a NOAA expedition that worked both off the eastern United States and on the high seas.
A sample needs a usable record, not just a specimen jar
The first pillar concerns marine genetic resources and digital sequence information associated with them. Under Articles 12 and 14, notification and benefit-sharing are connected. Parties must arrange for information to reach the Clearing-House Mechanism, including advance information about collection plans and subsequent information about what was collected and where it is held. The treaty’s genetic-resource provisions make the record accompanying research an essential part of the system.
Imagine a research program collecting a microorganism and later studying its genetic sequence. The physical sample, the sequence stored in a database, the scientific publication, and a possible commercial application can emerge at different times and in different institutions. Treating those steps as unrelated would make it difficult to understand who can access the material or what benefits arise. The agreement uses standardized batch identifiers and notifications to help keep that chain intelligible.
Benefit-sharing is not only a hypothetical royalty from a future medicine. The treaty expressly includes nonmonetary benefits such as access to samples, sequence information, reusable scientific data, research partnerships, training, and marine technology. Monetary benefits have a separate architecture, with decisions and modalities assigned to the COP. It would be misleading to announce a universal commercial percentage as though all of those choices had already been settled.
The timing rules also require care. Article 10 addresses material collected before the agreement entered into force and permits a specified written exception concerning its utilization. Several parties have lodged declarations. A researcher cannot infer the applicable treatment of an older collection from a global entry-into-force date alone. National implementation and the relevant party’s declarations belong in the compliance check, alongside the origin and collection history of the material.
Protection begins with a proposal, not a percentage
The second pillar creates a route to area-based management tools, including marine protected areas. Article 19 requires proposals from parties, individually or collectively, with geographic information, conservation objectives, a draft management plan, and other supporting material. Consultation and scientific review follow. The COP then has a decision-making role under Article 22. These are procedures for establishing particular measures, not an automatic closure of the high seas.
A credible proposal must explain what needs protection and what management would accomplish. A seamount habitat, a migratory corridor, and a water-column ecosystem do not necessarily face the same pressures or call for identical restrictions. The agreement’s definition of a marine protected area allows sustainable use where appropriate and consistent with its conservation objectives. “Protected” therefore needs to be read together with the actual plan, rather than assumed to mean the same rule everywhere.
Nor does the treaty instantly protect 30 percent of the ocean. A percentage target can motivate political action, but it is not a substitute for the legal steps that create, manage, monitor, and review a particular area. The meaningful evidence will include adopted boundaries, stated objectives, measures that address relevant activities, and a way to check whether those measures work. Counting an announcement before those elements exist can exaggerate practical progress.
Even adoption is more nuanced than a slogan about unanimous agreement or majority rule. Article 23 makes consensus the general rule, with a voting route if efforts to reach consensus have been exhausted. It also provides a defined objection procedure and related obligations. That structure makes close reading important: a decision’s geographic extent and its application to individual parties are not necessarily the same question.
Environmental assessment is a sequence of decisions
The third pillar concerns planned activities and their possible environmental impacts. Article 30 distinguishes screening from a fuller environmental impact assessment. Screening is triggered when effects may exceed a minor or transitory level, or are unknown or poorly understood. A full assessment follows when the specified higher threshold is met. The assessment provisions, Articles 28–39, do not say that every activity receives the same review regardless of risk.
The distinction is particularly relevant in poorly observed environments. Lack of information is not the same thing as demonstrated safety. Screening should describe the activity and examine possible effects, including cumulative impacts and, where appropriate, alternatives. A project can appear modest when considered alone yet contribute to a larger pattern of disturbance. A useful assessment therefore asks what else has happened, what is happening, and what is reasonably foreseeable in the area.
An assessment is also not a permit issued by a new world ocean government. Article 34 leaves the decision on whether a planned activity may proceed with the party that has jurisdiction or control over it. That party must take full account of the assessment and meet the treaty’s decision standard. Approval documents must identify relevant mitigation conditions and follow-up requirements and be made public, including through the Clearing-House Mechanism.
The practical test continues after approval. Monitoring, reporting, and review matter because predictions can be wrong and circumstances can change. Readers should look for a link between a predicted impact, a condition attached to approval, an observable indicator, and a response if the indicator moves in the wrong direction. A long report without a follow-through mechanism is weaker evidence of environmental management than a shorter record that makes those relationships clear.
The existing ocean institutions do not disappear
The BBNJ Agreement must be applied without undermining relevant existing instruments and bodies. That means coordination with institutions already responsible for particular activities, rather than assuming their functions transfer wholesale to the new COP. The International Maritime Organization describes its continuing shipping role alongside the agreement. A biodiversity decision and a shipping measure may need to move through different, connected institutional channels.
Fisheries are another important example. FAO’s statement to the preparatory process emphasizes the data, science, and operational expertise available through fisheries bodies. Regional fisheries management organizations do not cease to exist because BBNJ has entered into force. Article 22 allows the COP to recommend that measures within another body’s competence be adopted through that body, in accordance with its mandate.
The genetic-resource chapter also distinguishes research utilization from fishing and fishing-related activities regulated under international law. That is not a blanket statement that fish are irrelevant to the agreement. It is a warning against applying one chapter’s rules indiscriminately to every ocean activity. Similarly, mineral samples are not marine genetic resources. Biodiversity concerns and the international seabed mineral regime can intersect without being legally identical.
Participation takes equipment, expertise, and continuity
The fourth pillar is capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology. Article 42 calls for a country-driven process responsive to developing parties’ needs and priorities, with attention to small island developing states and least developed countries. It is not simply a promise to distribute hardware. The capacity-building provisions and Annex II encompass human, scientific, institutional, and technical capabilities needed to use the agreement.
A laboratory instrument is of limited value if the receiving institution cannot maintain it, train staff, preserve samples, or obtain the data needed for comparison. A seat on an expedition can be valuable, but durable participation also requires the ability to help define research questions and interpret the results. Those observations are an implementation test, not a claim that any particular country or program has failed to deliver.
There are existing systems to build on. UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission identifies the Ocean Biodiversity Information System, the Ocean Data and Information System, and OceanTeacher Global Academy among relevant data and training initiatives. Connecting such systems can be more useful than producing another isolated database. The important question is whether participants can discover, interpret, and reuse the information, not merely whether a portal has launched.
Before January, watch the plumbing
The preparatory process has worked on the institutional and financial arrangements needed for the first COP. The May 2026 advance report of the Preparatory Commission records workstreams covering governance, the Clearing-House Mechanism, and finance. Preparatory recommendations are not the same as final COP decisions. Budget rules, staffing, subsidiary bodies, and information procedures may look less dramatic than a reserve announcement, but they determine whether the treaty can operate.
The clearing house deserves particular scrutiny. Article 51 provides for a primarily open-access platform connecting information across the agreement’s four pillars. It is intended to help match capacity needs with support and link to other repositories. The UN’s current BBNJ website already lists pre-collection notifications and a focal-point notification. Those listings show that implementation activity need not wait for January, but they do not prove that every planned component of the permanent system is complete.
National guidance provides another window into practical implementation. The United Kingdom’s September 2026 disclosure guidance explains how its focal point handles collection and utilization information, including questions about legally protected information. That is a national example, not a rulebook for every researcher worldwide. It demonstrates why international obligations must become recognizable domestic procedures with a responsible office and a clear route for questions.
What would count as progress?
A useful scorecard separates five things: participation, institutional readiness, scientific accessibility, adopted management measures, and observed outcomes. More parties can broaden the agreement’s reach; they do not alone demonstrate a healthier habitat. A functioning data platform can improve transparency; it does not alone show that data are complete. An adopted area can establish an important legal framework; its ecological results require time and evidence.
The January meeting should therefore be read as a governance milestone, not the finish line. Watch whether decisions name responsible institutions, establish usable procedures, provide resources, and allow the public to follow what happens next. For a research program, that means a traceable sample and accessible results. For a proposed protected area, it means an intelligible plan and follow-up. For an assessment, it means a decision whose conditions can actually be monitored.
The agreement’s promise is not that a single institution will replace every existing ocean rule. It is that activities, evidence, and benefits previously handled in separate channels can become more connected. Whether that promise becomes real will be visible in specific records and decisions—not just in the size of the ocean on a conference backdrop.
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