On the shore near Mombasa, Kenya, as thousands of people discussed the future of the world’s oceans a few kilometres away, Joseph Ochieng Ouko was in the middle of another day at sea.
“Mimi ni mbaharia,” he says in Kiswahili, East Africa’s most widely spoken language: “I am a man of the ocean.”
The language blends Bantu roots with Arabic influence, owing to centuries of Indian Ocean trade – “Kiswahili” comes from the Arabic sawāḥilī (of the coast).
For 20 years, Ouko has made a living catching fish, octopus and other marine species along this coast. The ocean that sustains him and his family today, he says, is not the same one he first ventured into.
“The ocean has changed,” he says. “Sometimes the water levels rise, and the fish disappear. When conditions are good, certain types of fish return … fish are not as plentiful as they were in the past.”
These changes have been accompanied by a growing number of regulations. For example, officials inspecting fishing nets and stipulating larger mesh sizes to save juvenile fish from the catch.
This coast hosted more than 5,000 people from governments, businesses, civil society organisations and research institutions earlier this month, for the Our Ocean Conference. It marked the first time the ocean sustainability meeting has taken place in Africa.
Ouko understands the need to protect the ocean. But he says his community has needs, too. Asked what his message would be for delegates attending the nearby conference, Ouko does not hesitate: “As we continue working to better protect this ocean, they should also support us by providing modern fishing technology.”
A first for Africa
Ouko’s words zero in on a question that hovered over the conference: what does a global ocean gathering actually mean for the people whose livelihoods depend on the sea?
By the time Our Ocean 2026 (OOC11) concluded, 104 governments, companies and organisations had announced a total of 320 commitments. They were claimed to be worth a combined USD 6.4 billion, for marine protection, fisheries, pollution mitigation, action on climate change, maritime security and blue economy initiatives. Kenya alone announced USD 1 billion in commitments, including electronic monitoring for industrial fishing boats in its waters and protected ocean areas. The World Bank also pledged USD 1 billion, to support blue economies in developing countries across two years.
Those commitments are sorely needed, according to many scientists.
Marine researcher David Obura has been working on an update to the red list of endangered species, with a focus on corals. At OOC11, he explained how “almost half” of all coral species are threatened with extinction.
It cannot be possible that you love the ocean and yet cannot curb your greenhouse gas emissionsAngelique Poupouneau, lead ocean negotiator, Alliance of Small Island States
Obura – also the current chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – warned that climate change is already reshaping marine ecosystems. And these ecosystems support food production, coastal protection and local economies: “Our lives depend on them.”
Many African fisheries remain under pressure from overfishing, weak management systems, and inadequate data collection, according to the latest State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (Sofia) report. The report, launched during the conference, is compiled by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“In some areas, more than half of the fish stocks are overfished,” Manuel Barange, the FAO’s assistant director-general for fisheries and aquaculture, told Dialogue Earth.
‘We just have to do the work’
One attempt to address the challenge of overfishing that sprang forth from OOC11 was the Mombasa Declaration. Signed by 16 countries, it is a commitment to improve transparency in fisheries governance, and to strengthen efforts against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The Mombasa Declaration calls for greater access to information on fishing vessels, ownership structures, licensing systems and fishing activity.
Speaking during the declaration’s launch, the director of the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency, Ryan Orgera, said: “If we do not know who is fishing what, where, when and how, we will never be able to tackle illegal fishing.”
Ghana’s fisheries minister, Emelia Arthur, described transparency as a prerequisite for sustainable fisheries, adding: “Fisheries is nutrition, fisheries is food security, fisheries is livelihoods, fisheries is national security.”
Arthur outlined reforms Ghana has already introduced, including publication requirements for vessel licences, beneficial ownership disclosure and stricter monitoring systems. “The tools exist already, we just have to do the work,” she said.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) featured prominently during OOC11, with many governments promoting them as a preferred tool. MPAs restrict human activity to varying degrees, which is essential to achieving the global goal of protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030.
Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework sets the world a goal to “conserve 30% of land, waters and seas”.
The full target text contains numerous additional provisions and caveats:
Ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, and of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are effectively conserved and managed through ecologically representative, well-connected and equitably governed systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, recognizing indigenous and traditional territories where applicable, and integrated into wider landscapes, seascapes and the ocean, while ensuring that any sustainable use, where appropriate in such areas, is fully consistent with conservation outcomes, recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.
But speakers at the conference cautioned against viewing MPAs as a silver bullet. The need for MPAs to be carefully enforced and led locally was also stated repeatedly. Studies have shown that a large proportion of MPAs exist only on paper, with little on-the-water enforcement of regulations or real protection delivered to the environment.
“An MPA that is not properly monitored becomes just a paper MPA,” warned Barange.
Mangrove restoration, seagrass protection and other current initiatives to lock up carbon in the ocean were all touted as wins at the conference. But without restrictions on the carbon dioxide emissions that fuel global warming, such initiatives are buying time rather than a sustainable future.
“The solution is cutting emissions,” Angelique Poupouneau, lead ocean negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, told Dialogue Earth at the conference. “It cannot be possible that you love the ocean and yet cannot curb your greenhouse gas emissions.”
The hard part
If there was a thread running through the conference, it was the growing impatience with empty promises.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Moses Vilakati, who heads the African Union’s Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment department, distilled this thread: “Our challenge is implementation.”
The challenge is whether conferences like Our Ocean can actually achieve this.
That message resurfaced again and again. The former US special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, called for OOC11 to be “remembered as the conference that moved the world from commitments to implementation”. Kenya’s cabinet secretary for mining and the blue economy, Hassan Ali Joho, said: “this conference is about turning words into commitments, commitments into action, and action into a legacy we can be proud of.”
The conference introduced a new commitments tracker, intended to strengthen accountability. As of the close of OOC11, it listed 3,251 commitments: 39% complete, 44% in progress, and 17% not started.
Some delegates said true success must not be measured by the billions of dollars in pledges but in healthier fisheries, better-managed MPAs, and ocean communities being able to point to tangible improvements in their daily lives.
At an OOC11 side event on community-led marine protection, Amina, an Indigenous representative from Lamu on Kenya’s northern coast, echoed the concerns of Ouko:
“Our children are looking for jobs and can’t find them. We need as much assistance as we can get. We don’t have the right gear to catch fish in the ocean. That’s why my community has sent me here.”
Neither Ouko nor Amina spoke in the lingo of international conferences – of stakeholders, breakout sessions, plenaries, road maps and implementation frameworks. But they both understand, with the clarity of lived experience, what is at stake for millions of people.
As per the Kiswahili phrase, wanaotegemea bahari kwa riziki yao, those millions depend on the ocean for their livelihoods.
