The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other international agreements provide a framework for the management or protection of the marine environment. But their structuring is proving insufficient. Subjected to multiple pressures, the Ocean is at risk and a new framework for its governance is needed to ensure that it remains a source of life, wealth and connection and that it continues to appease international relations.

Collective awareness is essential to the universal nature of the accountability and responsibility we share towards the Ocean: wherever we are, we all grow from its benefits and interact with it through the water cycle and atmospheric circulation. Acknowledging the Ocean as a Global Common of Humanity – a global common at the service of and under the responsibility of all humankind – is a way to express this renewed vision, based on the principle of individual and collective responsibility. That of the States and that of each citizen.

This is a question of expressing a will which – without calling into question current law and its founding principles – calls on everyone to participate in the restoration of the Ocean, in a dynamic way. This does not mean renouncing sovereignty, or the sovereign rights held by international law: it means deciding to exercise them not as an owner jealous of his prerogatives and the profit he can make from them, but as a delegate who acts responsibly in accordance with the mandate he has received from humanity.

The reflections that fuelled a call for the recognition of the ocean as a global common of Humanity led us to propose the following principles to define its outline:

1. Respect for the law as enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: it is not a question of rewriting this founding text but of transcending its interpretation.
2. The recognition of ethical responsibility, collective and individual, before humanity, i.e., before the international community understood as the grouping of nations, organisations and current and future citizens.
3. Its application to all maritime spaces, including those under sovereignty and jurisdiction.

The ethical and non-legal nature of the concept puts the principles of freedom and sovereignty under the light of responsibility, guides and enlightens the law, and has as its corollary adapted and evolving variations, depending on the economic, social and environmental conditions specific to each individual. Making the whole of the Ocean as a global common is a question of posture, particularly on ethical terms.

Looking at the Ocean as a while, calling for everyone’s responsibility, transcending the interpretation of current rules, marking a desire for progress implemented according to the economic, social and environmental conditions specific to each person: these principles are a powerful level for a healthy Ocean, supporting peach and well-being.