beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ), took place from 4 to 17 September at UN Headquarters in New York. It addressed the topics identified in the package agreed in 2011, namely, the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, in particular, together and as a whole, marine genetic resources, including questions on the sharing of benefits, measures such as area-based management tools, including marine protected areas, environmental impact assessments and capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology.

The President of the Conference was requested to prepare, as part of the preparations for the second session, a document with the aim of facilitating focused discussions and text-based negotiations, containing treaty text language and reflecting the options concerning the four elements of the package. The President will make every effort possible to make this document available well in advance of the second session of the Conference. The Secretariat of the Conference presented the possible dates for the second and third sessions as 25 March to 5 April 2019 and 19-30 August 2019, respectively, while bearing in mind that the decision of the dates will be taken by the General Assembly.

For more information, please see the new UN website for the conference, www.un.org/bbnj.

The theme of the conference is "The Blue Economy and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," and it will focus on new technologies and innovation for oceans, seas, lakes and rivers as well as the challenges, potential opportunities, priorities and partnerships. For more, please see the new dedicated Conference website: www.blueeconomyconference.go.ke

Additionally, UN-DESA and Ambassador Peter Thomson, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, will hold a meeting of focal points for the nine thematic Communities of Ocean Action (COAs), in Nairobi on 25 November, the day before the Conference kicks off. The meeting aims to bring together the focal points for these Communities to identify gaps, discuss good practices and lessons learned in the delivery of the voluntary commitments.  It also aims to address the preparation of the midterm evaluations of the COAs and way forward for them in 2019.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ Special Envoy for the Ocean, Fijian diplomat Ambassador Peter Thomson, has spent the summer of 2018 continuing the push for implementation of SDG 14. The foundations for this campaign were laid at the UN Ocean Conference in 2017, with the Special Envoy committed to maintaining the conference’s spirit of inclusivity and partnership through active engagement with Member States, UN agencies, the private sector, the scientific community, civil society and philanthropic organizations.

In a recent message to the Secretary-General, the Special Envoy said, "All relevant indicators demonstrate the health of the Ocean is continuing to trend negatively, be it through the climate change effects of warming, deoxygenation and acidification, or the continuing mismanagement effects of pollution and harmful fisheries. The Special Envoy is working to reverse this trend through inculcating international loyalty to the implementation UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement."

In June, the Special Envoy attended the commemoration of this year’s World Oceans Day at UN Headquarters in New York, at the same time releasing an op-ed urging G7 countries to take positive measures to achieve the four SDG14 targets maturing in 2020.

Over the summer of 2018, amongst many other speaking engagements, he was a keynote speaker at the 6th GEF Assembly in Viet Nam, UNCTAD’s 2nd Oceans Forum on Trade-related Aspects of SDG 14 in Geneva, IOC’s high-level event in Paris on the UN Decade for Ocean Science, the high-level regional Climate Action Pacific Partnership Conference in Fiji, UNEP’s high-level event for ICRI (coral reefs) in Paris, and FAO’s Committee on Fisheries in Rome.

In July, in his address to the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development at UN Headquarters in New York, the Special Envoy emphasized the links between humanity’s land-based activities and the problems facing coastal and marine ecosystems. In particular he stressed the inescapable interlinkages between SDGs 6, 12, 13, 14 and 15.

More recently he was a keynote speaker at the Ocean session of the Global Climate Action Summit held in San Francisco, where he stressed that action to address Ocean’s problems is integral to humanity’s solutions to the challenges of climate change.

You are invited to follow the Special Envoy's Twitter account, on which he shares messages of solutions and strategies for achieving a healthy Ocean through implementation of SDG14 and fidelity to the Paris Climate Agreement. More information about his work can be found on his website oceanconference.un.org/SpecialEnvoy.

UN-DESA and Ambassador Peter Thomson, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, will hold a meeting of focal points for the nine thematic Communities of Ocean Action (COAs), in Nairobi on 25 November, the day before the Global Sustainable Blue Economy Conference begins. The meeting aims to bring together the focal points for these Communities to identify gaps, discuss good practices and lessons learned in the delivery of the voluntary commitments.

In the past century, 67% of global mangroves have been lost. Restoring and conserving these vital ecosystems is key to sustaining both coastal communities and biodiversity. Because investing in mangroves has such wide-ranging benefits, their protection is also a key pathway to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. At the Ocean Conference, nearly 90 voluntary commitments were made by institutions and governments related to the restoration, rehabilitation, protection, and management of mangroves and associated ecosystems. This September, the Community of Ocean Action on Mangroves is convening three regional webinars to discuss how to accelerate the implementation of these commitments, please see webinar section below for dates.