Relevance of the High Seas Treaty towards Ocean Sustainability Targets in the Global South

Oceans are endowed with myriad biotic and abiotic resources that sustain the global economy and livelihoods. Creating and operationalizing sustainable ocean governance pathways/frameworks has become more mundane today. Unfortunately, the current fragmented governance mechanisms and limted research ruin sustainable ocean management. Thus, ocean resources are under threat. This study presents a case of the High Seas Treaty (HST), as a possible conduit for repulsing unsustainable ocean indicators, thus ocean sustainability. The HST avails new bridges for breaking systemic ocean (un)sustainabiliity drivers. HST benefits could be extended to nearshore coastal zones. To operationalize the HST, a pathway that charts how sustainability pathways could be factored into global ocean co-governance has been developed. By streamlining the HST, and amalgamating it with transformative ocean governance frameworks, possibilities for identifying novel ocean sustainability pathways that promote sustainable and collaborative governance of ocean resources and equity are innumerable.