Kilaparti Ramakrishna is a senior advisor to the President and director on Ocean and Climate Policy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The Island States Ocean Summit held in Tokyo this June may come to be seen as a watershed moment in global ocean governance. For years, the international community has worked to build recognition of the ocean’s central role in climate stability, food security, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable development. That recognition has largely been achieved. The challenge now is delivery.
What emerged from Tokyo was not another declaration of intent but the outline of a practical framework for action. The summit brought together leaders and representatives from 35 nations, international organizations, and the private sector, alongside financial, scientific, and civil society institutions. Their focus centered on how island states can translate environmental ambition into action through Sustainable Ocean Planning and Management, an integrated framework aligning science, governance, finance, and community participation.
The timing is urgent. The ocean is under unprecedented pressure from climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and unsustainable resource use, even as demands on it grow. These pressures are particularly acute for island states and coastal nations, whose economies, cultures, and livelihoods remain tied to the sea. Nowhere is this more visible than in Asia and the Pacific, where billions depend on fisheries, maritime trade, tourism, and ecosystem services even as the region faces accelerating sea-level rise, coral reef degradation, and intensifying storms. Small Island Developing States face existential risks, while densely populated coastal regions from South and Southeast Asia to East Asia face mounting pressures of their own.
For much of the past decade, international efforts have focused on strengthening the global architecture for ocean governance. The rapid entry into force of the Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) marked a historic step toward stewardship of the high seas, and nature-based solutions such as mangrove restoration and coral reef conservation are becoming mainstream components of national climate strategies. But recognition alone won’t protect ecosystems or reduce vulnerability. Delivery demands institutions, investment, coordination, and staying power — which is where the Tokyo summit may prove consequential.
At the center of the discussions was Sustainable Ocean Planning and Management, a framework that moves beyond fragmented decision-making by integrating ocean science, climate resilience, biodiversity conservation, economic development, and social inclusion within a single national planning process. Rather than treating fisheries, tourism, conservation, shipping, energy, and coastal development as separate policy domains, SOPM aligns them around common objectives and transparent decision-making. For island states, this is not simply a governance exercise; it is a pathway toward managing the entirety of their ocean areas in ways that balance protection, production, and prosperity.
The summit also highlighted an important reality: finance follows planning. Investors, development banks, and climate funds often face uncertainty about priorities and governance arrangements; integrated ocean planning reduces that uncertainty and can unlock public and private finance at scale — particularly important for island states facing capacity and financing constraints. Participants emphasized the need for predictable, accessible financing for ocean management, restoration, monitoring, and data systems, through blended finance and private-sector investment. But financing must support nationally defined priorities rather than drive them.
The summit’s most important contribution, however, may be its focus on implementation: strengthening ocean observation systems, improving access to data and decision-support tools, expanding early warning systems, and investing in long-term scientific and institutional capacity. Participants also stressed the need for stronger coordination across government agencies and greater inclusion of Indigenous knowledge, local communities, women, youth, and civil society in decision-making.
Particularly noteworthy was support for a Sustainable Ocean Planning and Management Support Platform led by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. If properly resourced, such a platform could connect countries with technical expertise, financing, data resources, and peer-learning networks — a practical mechanism for translating commitments into national action. The summit also underscored the need for coherence across international frameworks: ocean planning should not exist in isolation from climate action, biodiversity conservation, or the BBNJ Agreement, but should bridge these agendas.
That lesson extends well beyond island states. The world is entering an era where climate, biodiversity, food security, water security, energy transitions, and sustainable development can no longer be managed through isolated institutions and sectoral policies. The ocean sits at the center of many of these challenges, and integrated approaches are no longer just desirable — they are necessary.
The Japanese government and the Nippon Foundation deserve credit for advancing this conversation. By convening the summit in partnership with UNESCO/IOC and bringing together political leaders, practitioners, scientists, and financial institutions, they demonstrated the kind of bridge-building leadership increasingly needed in global governance. As a maritime nation with deep Pacific and Indian Ocean ties, Japan is well placed to foster cooperation among developed and developing nations, island and continental states, and the public and private sectors.
The lessons from Tokyo reach beyond ocean policy. The Island States Ocean Summit demonstrated that the future challenge is not a lack of international commitments but the ability to implement them coherently — a lesson equally relevant to the broader United Nations system. As governments reflect on UN80 and begin shaping the post-2030 development agenda, there is growing recognition that institutions built around individual sectors and treaties are struggling to address interconnected planetary challenges. The integrated approach embodied in Sustainable Ocean Planning and Management offers a glimpse of what twenty-first century multilateralism could look like: science-based, country-led, inclusive, and implementation-focused. The ocean should not simply be one item on the UN reform agenda; it can serve as a model for the kind of integrated governance that agenda seeks to achieve.
The summit’s significance lies not in its declarations but in what it set in motion. The ocean community has spent much of the past decade building recognition of the ocean’s importance. The next decade will be judged by implementation. The question is no longer whether the ocean matters, but whether governments, institutions, investors, and societies can organize themselves to act at the scale and speed required. The discussions in Tokyo suggest that island states, often on the front lines of the ocean crisis, may once again help show the world the way forward.
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