Oceans

Oceans Futures

The nexus of geopolitical tension, ocean conflict, maritime crime, and societal instability is becoming increasingly important. A robust ocean conservation agenda must include natural resource conflict resolution, peace building, and law enforcement capacity building. With our Oceans Futures work, WWF offers predictive analytics for early warning, strategic planning, and preventive conservation solutions that global maritime security and enforcement organizations can use to build a science-driven and networked approach to unsustainable marine resource extraction.

As part of this programming, WWF will also leverage its agency, political influence, policy development experience, science, and government relations capabilities to build and advocate for prioritizing, implementing, and funding ocean solutions.

Because when oceans thrive, the world is more peaceful.

Our 2030 impact targets

Planet

Halt declines and recover and grow ecosystems and marine resources in the places where we work

People

Deliver resilient food and livelihood security for 100 million people

Prosperity

Protect billions in economic infrastructure through nature-based solutions

Peace

Reduce conflict, crime, and societal instability via effective marine natural resource management

Stopping ocean conflict before it happens Predicting conflict hot spots

Fish is a conflict commodity. From community-level disagreements about the borders of fishing grounds to the use of force between international navies and industrial fishing vessels, conflict over fisheries threatens food security, contributes to social upheaval, escalates geopolitical tensions, and can short-circuit the success of conservation efforts. Climate change is escalating these risks as fish move within and across international borders in search of more hospitable waters.

Our Oceans Futures platform will integrate existing climate and fisheries models with emerging science and data on the causes of fisheries conflict to predict the location of future conflict hot spots. Users from the national security, seafood industry, and conservation sectors can explore the platform to understand how to design strategy and direct resources toward reducing the risk of conflict.

Strengthening maritime security Supporting enforcement efforts with science

Conflict over fisheries can be prevented with effective management, strong and inclusive governance, and effective, information-rich enforcement efforts. As maritime security agencies increasingly recognize the intersection of marine resource management and ocean peace, they are working to stop illegal fishing and intervene where the fisheries sector may support illicit trade in arms, drugs, and wildlife.

WWF is partnering with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to support their enforcement efforts with fisheries science and on-the-ground knowledge of fisheries management systems.

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