Reimagining our relationship with the ocean - and acting on it
The United Nations has chosen "Reimagine" as the theme for World Oceans Day 2026. For the Global Environment Facility, that word carries a particular resonance — and a particular responsibility.
Photo credit: Subphoto/Adobe Stock
To reimagine something is not simply to picture it differently. It is to see it as it truly is, then commit to doing better. That is the spirit behind "Reimagine" — the theme of World Oceans Day 2026 — and it captures something the world has been building for decades: a fundamentally different relationship between humanity and the high seas.
This year, that reimagining found its legal expression. On January 17, 2026, the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction — the BBNJ Agreement — entered into force. For the first time in a generation, the international community chose to govern the ocean's most vast and most vulnerable spaces together. It was a historic act of collective will, and it happened in record time: less than three years from adoption to entry into force.
The Global Environment Facility helped make this possible.
Reimagining governance: The BBNJ Agreement
When the BBNJ Agreement was adopted in 2023, the path from signature to entry into force required ratification by 60 countries — a high bar for the international community. The question was whether the systems and expertise needed to ratify and implement it were within reach.
The GEF provided that reach. Under its eighth replenishment (GEF-8, from 2022-2026), the GEF Council allocated $34 million for support to the BBNJ Agreement. Within two years, nearly $20 million has supported almost 100 countries across five continents with dedicated national support — ratification assistance, legal analysis, and implementation readiness — delivered through the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United Nations Environment Programme. A complementary global project is building cross-regional coordination and support.
From Pacific Island states to West African nations, from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, these investments are helping strengthen ocean governance — ensuring that the BBNJ Agreement entered into force as a genuinely global achievement, not just a compact among the well-resourced. Under GEF-9 (funding from 2026-2030), support to the BBNJ Agreement as part of the financial mechanism more than doubles, with future support guided by the Agreement's Conference of the Parties, expected to convene in January 2027.
Reimagining what's possible: three decades of ocean investment
The GEF's commitment to the BBNJ Agreement grows from more than 30 years of sustained ocean investment. The GEF is the world's largest multilateral public funder for the ocean, having invested more than $2.4 billion in over 370 ocean projects, leveraging an additional $13 billion in co-financing. Under GEF-9, funding for ocean conservation and sustainable management has increased— reflecting a reimagining of the scale at which multilateral finance must operate.
This portfolio has consistently been leading the charge in addressing top priorities It has led the charge in supporting transboundary marine governance, including in areas beyond national jurisdiction. For fisheries, GEF-supported projects are piloting electronic monitoring systems that make Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated fishing harder to conceal and easier to prosecute — reimagining transparency as a conservation tool. In shipping, a GEF-led global initiative is confronting hull biofouling, the largely invisible spread of invasive species on ship hulls, working with the International Maritime Organization to reimagine the global shipping industry as a partner in ocean health rather than a threat to it.
In protected areas, GEF-supported projects are translating the 30x30 ambition — protecting 30 percent of the world's oceans by 2030 — from aspiration into transboundary reality, from the Blue Nature Alliance's interconnected marine reserves to the Coral Triangle and the Blue Pacific. These projects ask countries to reimagine conservation not as a national act but as a shared one.
An ocean worth reimagining
The ocean has always flowed through us — in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the climate that makes our lives possible. What World Oceans Day 2026 asks us to reimagine is not the ocean itself, but our role in relation to it: from passive inheritors of its generosity to active, accountable guardians of its future.
The GEF was established for exactly that kind of commitment — long-term, multilateral, and grounded in the belief that protecting the global environment is not a cost but an investment. This World Oceans Day, we reaffirm that commitment to every country working to close the distance between the ocean we have and the ocean we owe future generations.
