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Oceans

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Oceans

Healthy oceans that benefit the planet, people, prosperity, and peace

Overview

At WWF, we believe that healthy oceans benefit the planet, people, prosperity, and peace. We must protect, restore, and nurture them for nature and communities worldwide.

We take a place-based and whole-systems approach to move the world's oceans toward a nature-positive future across sectors at all scales, using science as our guide.

Nature Positive is a global societal goal defined as ‘Halt and Reverse Nature Loss by 2030 on a 2020 baseline and achieve full recovery by 2050’.

WWF takes an integrated approach to our oceans, combining place-based conservation work across Nature-Positive Seascapes with global scale Oceans Markets and Blue Finance initiatives. And under Oceans Futures we incubate, develop, and launch new innovative programs at the intersection of climate change, ocean health, and peace and security. All of these workstreams contribute to Nature Positive—the global goal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

Our 2030 impact targets are audacious because the times call for it:

Planet: halt, 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 of dollars in economic infrastructure through nature-based solutions.
Peace: reduce conflict, crime, and societal instability via effective marine natural resource management.

Browse Photos & Videos

In the Bering Sea, Alaska Native Peoples tell their story through photographs

WWF partnered with the community of Savoonga to host a week-long participatory photography workshop. We worked with the participants to grow their photography skills and explore the art of telling visual stories.

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A man wearing sunglasses holds a pole with an orange buoy at one end and a yellow cover at the other in front of the water

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Why It Matters

When oceans thrive, the planet regains its natural strength and flourishes

Healthy oceans and the marine species living in them provide natural at-scale solutions to climate adaptation and resilience—and they absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide. Oceans fuel the water cycles that produce rain and freshwater and create oxygen. And oceans are foundational to spectacular ecosystems and biodiversity, including treasured marine wildlife such as whales, sharks, polar bears, and turtles.
When oceans thrive, people thrive

Where ocean ecosystems are resilient and productive, so are coastal communities. Researchers looking at more than 100 studies to better understand the connection between marine conservation and human health found that most people in the world depend on ocean health for food, health, and economic benefits.
When oceans thrive, societies are prosperous

Oceans play a vital role in many of our shared faiths and cultures. They also play a critical role in our economies. Nature-based solutions protect billions of dollars in physical infrastructure and the value of key ocean assets is conservatively estimated to be at least $24 trillion. A rapidly growing ocean economy promises a new era of sustainable economic development as sectors including seafood production, coastal development, shipping, and renewable energy can revolutionize the well-being of communities and countries everywhere.
When oceans thrive, the world is more peaceful

The ocean feeds billions of people, delivers hundreds of millions of jobs, and provides safety and security to millions of individuals and communities vulnerable to the threat of climate change and natural disasters. Unhealthy oceans further conflict, crime, and societal unrest. But healthy oceans provide an enabling environment for peaceful and well-functioning societies.

What WWF Is Doing

Nature-Positive Oceans

Nature Positive is a global goal to halt and reverse nature loss measured from a baseline established in 2020. We aim to increase the health, abundance, diversity, and resilience of species, populations, and ecosystems so that by 2030 nature is visibly and measurably on the path of recovery. By 2050, nature must recover so that thriving ecosystems and nature-based solutions can continue to support future generations.

What’s unique about the Nature Positive concept for oceans?

Our oceans are industrializing rapidly and facing multiple, overlapping threats, including upstream impacts from land and freshwater. The ocean is also understudied; at least two-thirds of marine species are unidentified and may go extinct before we even identify them. Despite the challenges, action for the ocean offers many opportunities to reduce climate change, reverse nature loss, and support communities.

How can we all get started?

Take a holistic approach to consider how humanity both impacts and depends on nature;

Shift mindsets to move beyond mitigating harm to also regenerating biodiversity and transforming systems to heal our broken relationship with nature;

Use inclusive, participatory processes that incorporate diverse science and knowledge, including from Indigenous peoples and local communities.

What do we need to do urgently?

Everyone has a role to play in contributing to a nature-positive future for our oceans. We urge all actors—especially the most powerful—to contribute now to a nature-positive future.

Science is clear: healthy natural systems are the foundation for a future in which humanity doesn’t just survive, but also thrives. The transformation to a nature-positive future means giving back to nature more than we take from it in ways that are credible, equitable, and sustainable. We are outlining a pathway forward that notes not only the benefits of working toward nature-positive outcomes but also the urgency with which we must act.

Nature-positive future

We all have a part to play in the transition to a nature-positive future. If you have a bank account or eat seafood, you have the power to help us move toward better outcomes by asking questions about how your funds are invested and making sustainable choices. And we need individual actions to coalesce toward collective actions that drive significant societal transformations toward environmental sustainability.

WWF is working across sectors, disciplines, and institutions to develop a framework for the transformations needed for a nature-positive future for our oceans. We aim to steer all people—especially the most powerful actors—in the same direction to take the critical and urgent actions needed to protect our oceans.

Seascapes

Nature-positive seascapes that benefit the planet, people, prosperity, and peace

WWF works to deliver nature-positive seascapes—halting the decline of marine environments and regenerating target ecosystems and marine resources.

Our place-based conservation work in seascapes takes an integrated, holistic approach that benefits local communities. We start with a science-based approach to seascape selection, design, and management. We develop specific, measurable targets within a seascape and use an overarching monitoring, evaluation, and learning framework to assess the impacts of the interventions on the planet, people, prosperity, and peace.

Through a partnership mindset, our nature-based solutions drive climate adaptation and resilience, food and livelihood security, peace and security, and healthy oceans outcomes globally.

Oceans markets

Private sector solutions for nature-positive outcomes

Our markets work engages businesses to deliver scalable, durable, and nature-positive global oceans solutions, as well as support our nature-positive seascape work.

Engaging businesses for nature-positive outcomes involves addressing their environmental and social footprints, bringing forth green and blue infrastructure solutions, establishing long-term investments in the seascapes where they do business, and driving systemic transformations across sectors including in policy and finance. Our focal sectors are seafood, coastal development, marine renewables, and shipping. In the seafood sector alone, WWF has built more than 80 partnerships with companies that have made sustainable seafood purchasing commitments, touching more than 600 fisheries around the world.

Blue Finance

Finance for a sustainable and nature-positive blue economy

The blue economy—all economic activities related to oceans, seas, and coasts—is worth $24 trillion, but declining ocean health and mismanagement of marine resources threaten the future of ocean-based communities and economies. By contrast, a nature-positive and sustainable blue economy significantly benefits the planet, people’s food and job security, economic prosperity, and global peace and security. To achieve this vision, capital must be directed away from destructive activities, and towards those that offer sustainable outcomes; and we must develop new innovative financial products that drive capital into building resilient coastal communities and seascapes, where it is needed the most. WWF is working with major financial institutions to do just that.

Oceans futures

Innovation for peaceful, thriving, and nature-positive oceans

The importance of oceans in reducing conflict, crime, and societal instability is on the rise. Therefore, a robust ocean conservation agenda must include natural resource conflict resolution, peacebuilding, and law enforcement capacity building. Under Oceans Futures, WWF offers predictive analytics, early warning, strategic planning, and preventive conservation solutions to current and future conflicts over marine resources.

Projects

Stopping Ghost Gear

Fishing feeds billions of people and is vital to the economies of countless coastal communities. But unsustainable practices litter the ocean with deadly traps that needlessly kill marine mammals, turtles, and seabirds.

Abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear, commonly referred to as ghost gear, contribute significantly to the problem of plastic pollution in our ocean. These gillnets, traps, and other types of fishing gear are particularly harmful because they can continue to catch target and non-target species indiscriminately for years. This impacts important food resources as well as endangered species. Because of this, ghost gear has been coined as the most deadly form of marine plastic debris, damaging vital ocean habitats, aquatic life, and livelihoods.
Universal Standards for Seafood Traceability

The ocean provides a bounty of seafood, supporting hundreds of millions of jobs and feeding billions of people. But roughly a quarter of the fish caught globally is done illegally in the shadows, fueling a black market that exploits wildlife, people, and gaps in enforcement of laws. A lack of transparency allows rogue vessels and criminal networks to operate undetected and profit off stolen fish, taking money out of the pockets of people who follow the rules and contributing to declines in ocean health. Ending this black-market trade of seafood is good for nature and people but will require an array of proven tools working in tandem, chief among them is traceability.

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