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A Digital Foundation for the BBNJ Agreement - Potential contributions of OBIS to the implementation of the High Seas Treaty

13 November 2025

Hammerhead sharks swimming. Photo: Masayuki Agawa / Ocean Image Bank


The “Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction”, commonly referred to as the BBNJ Agreement or the “High Seas Treaty”, is a landmark international legal text that directly addresses biodiversity-related challenges in the high seas. A breakthrough for marine conservation, the treaty relies on an innovative structure, the Clearing-House Mechanism (CHM), for its operationalisation. The CHM serves as the central information hub of the BBNJ Agreement, bringing together initiatives that support the treaty and making it easier for countries, scientists, and other stakeholders to find, share, and access relevant data, information, and knowledge. In this article, we explore how OBIS is particularly well-positioned to support the BBNJ Agreement’s transition to full operational capacity.

The BBNJ Agreement: the world’s first binding conservation framework for the high seas

The high seas have a special status under international law: they are part of the global commons, beyond the sovereignty of any single state. Their conservation and resource management are under the shared responsibility of all states, including landlocked countries. Conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction were not comprehensively addressed in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which primarily regulates maritime zones, navigation rights, resource exploitation, and environmental responsibilities in international waters. In response to mounting pressures threatening the ecological balance of the high seas, the BBNJ Agreement was adopted as an implementing agreement to UNCLOS to close existing legal gaps. With over 60 countries having ratified it, the BBNJ Agreement will enter into force on 17 January 2026 and become the first international legally binding instrument explicitly focusing on biodiversity in the High Seas, establishing a landmark in global Ocean governance. The text of the BBNJ Agreement is structured around four interdependent pillars, each addressing specific needs identified by the Parties:

The “Marine genetic resources, including questions on the sharing of benefits (MGR)” pillar aims to establish a framework for fair, transparent and equitable access to genetic material and its sequence data, ensuring that scientific and commercial gains will be shared among all Parties, contributing to the common good, particularly for developing countries.

The “Area-Based Management Tools (ABMTs), including Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)” pillar provides the legal basis for designating, assessing and monitoring conservation zones in the high seas and regulating human activities. Establishing coordinated and concerted MPAs in areas beyond national jurisdiction is a significant milestone for marine protection, in line with global conservation targets such as protecting 30% of the global Ocean by 2030 set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

The “Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA)” pillar stipulates that planned activities in areas beyond national jurisdiction with potential effects on the marine environment must go through a transparent, science-based process led by the State planning the activity to determine the extent of impact on the surrounding ecosystems. This pillar promotes common oversight and precautionary decision-making to prevent illegal or environmentally hazardous activities in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction.

The “Capacity-Building and Transfer of Marine Technology (CB\&TMT)” pillar aims to address disparities ​​​​in scientific, technical, and institutional capacities between Parties by promoting financial, technical, and institutional support to improve national capabilities. This pillar seeks to close skill, knowledge, and technology gaps, encourage inclusive participation, and reinforce cooperation among Parties, contributing to more equitable and effective Ocean governance.

On an operational level, the Clearing-House Mechanism of the BBNJ Agreement will serve as the central digital infrastructure powering the practical implementation of the four pillars. The scope of the CHM is broad: it will centralize and provide equitable access to key services such as data, records, maps, assessments, offers, and capacity-building requests from Parties. As the operational interface between national implementation and global oversight, the CHM will ensure efficiency, transparency, traceability, and accountability across data and technology flows. The CHM is also being designed to help address capacity gaps, particularly by facilitating access to scientific knowledge, technology, and expertise for developing states.

To maximize costs- and time-efficiency, and align with the spirit of the BBNJ Agreement, the CHM could “build on existing instruments, frameworks, and bodies to avoid duplication.” This approach would harness the maturity, networks, communities, and the scientific reliability of established systems and initiatives, taking advantage of already developed and well-accepted standards and processes. By doing so, the CHM would also enhance international collaboration and the reuse of digital resources across disciplines and regions to cover the needs of the BBNJ Agreement.

OBIS expertise supporting the needs of the BBNJ Agreement

With over 25 years of experience and an active global community, OBIS provides data, tools, and expertise that can support the implementation of the BBNJ Agreement. As the world’s largest marine biodiversity data platform, OBIS provides open, FAIR-compliant data, tools, and services aligned with the Agreement’s provisions on transparency, equitable access, and benefit-sharing. It integrates standardized, high-quality biodiversity data from areas beyond national jurisdiction and can support the four pillars of the BBNJ Agreement.

Under the Marine Genetic Resources (MGRs) pillar, OBIS can support the deployment of a Standardized Batch Identifier (SBI) system. SBIs are globally unique, persistent identifiers assigned to batches of biodiversity samples and subsequent to data derived from those samples, such as marine genetic resources, to make them continuous, traceable, and supported by machine-readable metadata. An existing and widely accepted system and protocol, Digital Object Identifiers could be particularly well-suited to power and sustain a global Standardized Batch Identifier system. With a DOI-based approach, OBIS supports the preservation of the data provenance, enables citation and usage tracking, and preserves data integrity. Such a system would also guarantee acknowledgement, recognition, and ownership for data contributors while maintaining accountability along the entire data transformation chain, a crucial condition for Large Ocean States and Developing States. On a more operational level, OBIS can also support the design and implementation of the local-to-global data pipeline powering the MGR pillar. Through two recent flagship projects—the Pacific Islands Marine Bioinvasions Alert Network (PacMAN) and Phase I of the UNESCO eDNA Expeditions—OBIS has demonstrated its capacity to integrate molecular marine biodiversity data into actionable products and to establish end-to-end biomolecular frameworks supporting evidence-based decision-making. This includes tracking in-situ species occurrences and associating them with collection events, cruise tracks, and sampling protocols to provide context and increase transparency in data collection.

OBIS can directly contribute to the ABMT/MPA pillar by providing georeferenced species occurrence data and derivative products such as Species Distribution Maps, which can inform the identification, design, and monitoring of high seas protected areas. Additional visualization tools and indicators developed by the OBIS community further support stakeholder engagement, scientific consultation, adaptive management of conservation zones, and the deployment of Area-Based Management Tools from the BBNJ Agreement. Notably, OBIS’s contribution to the State of the Ocean Report 2024 showcased its capacity to aggregate, analyze, and visualize nearly 50 million distribution records, documenting 93,106 marine species within Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) worldwide, including 72% of all species classified as threatened according to the IUCN Red list, underscoring the value of OBIS data integrations for evidence-based MPA policy.

Under the EIA pillar, OBIS provides baseline biodiversity and species distribution data, including modelled species range maps under current and future climate change scenarios. This data is essential for conducting robust impact assessments, with long-term observation series enabling comparisons of pre-/post-impact conditions analysis as well as cumulative impact analysis over time. OBIS can also support the early identification of areas harbouring sensitive species or habitats, highlighting biodiversity hotspots where planned activities may cause disproportionate disruptions. Additionally, OBIS’s capacity to integrate innovative data streams, such as environmental DNA, can broaden the scope of EIAs and help future-proof the pillar. Together with IOC platforms such as the Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS), OBIS contributes to making these data discoverable and reusable, enhancing transparency and accountability in the EIA process.

Finally, OBIS plays a supporting role under the Capacity-Building and Technology Transfer pillar. Its community includes 29 National and 7 Thematic Nodes, 15 of which are located in Developing States, with over 6000 contributors around the world. The OBIS Nodes have a solid track record in capacity-building and data mobilization, turning local data holders into global contributors. In partnership with the OceanTeacher Global Academy, OBIS and its community have developed multilingual and standardized courses to develop local capacity for marine biodiversity data collection, management, and sharing.

Working together for the future of the Ocean

The BBNJ Agreement is a crucial milestone towards protecting life in the high seas. Poised to enter into force on 17 January 2026, the Agreement and its Clearing-House Mechanism need to become operational quickly and, importantly, in a reliable and interoperable manner. Stakes are high. Beyond marine biodiversity protection, the BBNJ Agreement is an important cornerstone for global Ocean governance. The treaty is an opportunity to demonstrate that a robust science-first, data-enabled approach, combined with cooperation across parties, equal access to resources, and shared benefits, can change how the world manages its global commons. Its success will depend on ensuring that all Parties, particularly Small Islands Developing States and Low and Medium Income Countries, can access data, technology, and opportunities fairly. As an operational, reliable, and community-governed global initiative, OBIS can directly support this ambition.