The United Nations Ocean Conference has opened in the southern French city of Nice. Organizers are pushing for the ratification of the High Seas Treaty, which aims to protect 30% of the Earth’s land and sea by 2030. The treaty will only go into force after 60 countries ratify the treaty. This is Yann Laurans of WWF France.

Yann Laurans: “We have witnessed a lot of international conferences that eventually issue a very ambitious text, but with really no teeth. We want a text to have teeth to be able to really impose constraints and be accompanied with funding. We need funding. We need money to actually preserve the ocean. We need money to control. We need money to support the people that live out of the ocean. And that’s what we want. We’re not sure it will happen yet, so that’s why we are putting pressure on our governments.”