As World Oceans Day approaches on June 8, policymakers and scientists are being asked to rethink what ocean conservation really requires—and the answer may surprise those focused solely on hitting global targets. The United Nations has set ambitious benchmarks: the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to ensure at least 30% of marine and coastal areas are effectively conserved and managed by 2030, while the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–30) has advanced 10 challenges to drive action, including protecting and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity. These targets matter. But a growing body of research suggests they miss something essential: the people who actually steward the oceans.
For six years, researchers have been making the case that coastal communities must be at the heart of conservation efforts—not as afterthoughts, but as the foundation. This insight gained urgency as the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework was being drafted. Now, as the UN's Ocean Decade reaches its midway point, evidence is mounting that what truly determines conservation success is not area-based targets alone, but rather the quality of relationships between communities, organizations, governments, and researchers working across local to global scales.
Recent research into small-scale fisheries in Africa and Asia reveals a striking pattern. Governance networks that succeed are built on relational ties—shared geographical location, membership in particular organizations, common values and objectives. These bonds become the foundation for effective decision-making and collective action. The lesson is practical and profound: when communities collaborate around a shared sense of place and purpose, positive stewardship follows. Equally important is how this work gets done. Knowledge co-production processes—where scientists and communities learn together—must actively work to equalize power relationships that have historically favored researchers over local practitioners.
A large-scale global research initiative called the Integrated Marine Biosphere Research has spent years documenting the same finding: transformative ocean science emerges where diverse communities, including researchers, are genuinely involved in ocean stewardship. An ongoing initiative in the Western Indian Ocean is using participatory and arts-based methods to understand how coastal communities navigate rapid change and tenure transitions—approaches that privilege local knowledge alongside scientific expertise.
The implication is clear: place-based conservation designed alongside communities, not imposed on them, yields better outcomes. This means respecting and revitalizing local and customary rules and practices. It means researchers, industry, and government committing to transdisciplinary partnerships that link people across scales. It means recognizing that coastal communities don't exist to serve conservation targets—conservation targets exist to serve communities and the ecosystems that sustain them.
Achieving the ambition of the UN Ocean Decade and 2030 biodiversity targets will require robust science. But without genuine focus on the relationships that underpin good science and equitable action, even the most carefully designed targets will remain out of reach. The future of the shared ocean will depend not only on what the world chooses to protect, but on how we choose to relate to one another and to the living world that sustains us all.