Exploring Ocean-related Rights in a Transforming World

• DOI: 10.5194/oos2025-299
• Publication Date: 2025-03-26T01:20:54Z
• Authors: Lynne Shannon; Elisa Morgera; Hannah Gosnell; Darcy Riddell; Chinwe Ifejika Sp...; Ethan Gordon; Henry Pitts; Sebastian Villasante; Cesar Rodriguez-G...

Rights-based approaches are proving pivotal as we struggle with the challenges around biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. Human rights span a broad spectrum from individual and community-based rights to national and global human rights to healthy oceans, which includes access. Rights of Nature, implicit in many Indigenous communities, have seen growing recognition in recent decades and, in several instances, personhood of nature/parts thereof have been granted legal standing. This introduces a new dimension to management of ocean-based anthropogenic activities. In this paper, we examine potential synergies and trade-offs when aiming for a balance between human rights and ocean-related nature’s rights as we strive towards more desirable futures. We focus on rights-based approaches in managing human-nature interactions in the ocean context, including visions that have been developed and visioning processes that have been undertaken, with a view to transforming ocean-human inter-relations and coexistence.