Fast-tracking solutions for a healthy ocean
Friends of Ocean Action is a unique, informal group of over 55 ocean leaders who are fast-tracking solutions to the most pressing challenges facing the ocean. Its members – the Friends – come from business, civil society, international organizations, science and technology.
Our mission
The mission of Friends of Ocean Action is to use our knowledge, means and influence to help the international community take the urgent steps needed to “conserve and sustainably use our ocean, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”
Sustainable Development Goal 14 for life below water
Co-Chairs
Peter Thomson
UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean
Isabella Lövin
Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden
We have the knowledge, power and technology to put the ocean on a path to recovery. The ocean’s power of regeneration is remarkable, if we just offer it the chance.
Taking action
Working alongside the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy that brings the political will of 12 heads of government, our aim is to drive action and transformative, high-impact and scaleable initiatives in time for the proposed UN Ocean Conference in 2020. We have the following action tracks:
Plastic pollution
Sustainable ocean production: blue food
Ending illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing
Marine protection and conservation
Decarbonizing the maritime and shipping sectors
Liberating ocean data
Financing ocean innovation
Eliminating Harmful Fisheries Subsidies
Gender parity
Science-based targets
Deep-sea mining
Find out more
Friends of Ocean Action Tweets
The ocean sustains us, stabilizes our climate and absorbs much of the carbon and heat we produce.
Up to 70% of the oxygen we breathe comes from marine life.
Over 3 billion people rely on a healthy ocean to provide jobs and food.
If the ocean were an economy, it would be the seventh largest in the world.
Yet we are causing widespread harm to this planetary lifeline.
Human actions have pushed species to the brink, and caused seas to warm, rise and become more acidic.
8 million tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the ocean every year –the equivalent of one garbage truck every minute.
