Yaound©: For decades, decisions about the world's oceans have largely been made without the people who depend on them most. At the 11th Our Ocean Conference, that appeared to be changing, at least for artisanal fishers and grassroots conservation groups. But Indigenous advocates say there is still a gap in indigenous representation: while local communities are increasingly finding a place in global ocean discussions, Indigenous Peoples continue to be largely underrepresented in both participation and policy commitments.
According to Cameroon News Agency, for 60-year-old Sarr Mamadou, a fisherman from Senegal, attending the conference was itself evidence of that gradual shift. Mamadou has been a fisherman in Senegal since the 1970s. For more than four decades, the ocean has been both his home and his livelihood. But in recent years, that livelihood has come under increasing threat. He and members of his fishing community have experienced the impacts of industrial fishing vessels firsthand. Through community patrols, they have also played an active role in reporting illegal activities by industrial trawlers to the relevant authorities for sanctions.
As president of the artisanal fishing association PAPAS, Mamadou attended the conference to highlight the challenges facing small-scale fishing communities while sharing their efforts to protect marine resources. He says the gathering also gave him a rare opportunity to present their concerns directly to international institutions, including the World Bank.
Mamadou was among several fishers and grassroots conservation practitioners from countries including Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and Brazil, amongst others, who participated in discussions throughout the conference, bringing firsthand experiences from communities directly dependent on marine ecosystems. For many participants, this growing representation was one of the conference's most significant achievements, describing it as a long-overdue shift toward more inclusive ocean governance.
Beyond the conference, Mamadou says, their participation in day-to-day ocean governance has greatly empowered fishing communities to see themselves not merely as resource users, but to recognize that they have an important role to play in ocean protection. That growing sense of ownership recently led them to join civil society organisations in signing a national petition opposing a ministerial decision to issue new coastal demersal fishing licences in Senegal. The campaign ultimately prompted the government to suspend the decision.
While grassroots participation seems to be expanding, Indigenous representatives say the 11th Our Ocean Conference reinforced the concern of the limited space their communities continue to occupy in global ocean governance. Although the conference featured a side event on Indigenous leadership at the ocean-climate nexus, showcasing four successful and scalable Indigenous and community-led initiatives, indigenous representatives argued that such dedicated sessions remained the exception rather than evidence of meaningful inclusion in the conference's broader decision-making processes.
Dr. Johnson Jament, an ocean researcher from India representing the Asia Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy (AIPNEE), acknowledged the stronger presence of fishers and local communities during the conference, but expressed concern over what he described as the limited participation of Indigenous Peoples, and the implications this could have for future conservation efforts.
His concerns were echoed by Sarah Lee, a researcher from South Korea and fellow representative of AIPNEE. Lee noted that despite increasing references to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) in international conservation discourse, Indigenous-specific commitments remain almost absent from the Our Ocean Conference.
The International Labor Organization's Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (Convention 169), Article 1(b), describes Indigenous peoples as 'peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonization or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions.'
With the 12th Our Ocean Conference scheduled to take place in Canada in 2027, the host country has pledged to strengthen the integration of Indigenous knowledge into the conference. For Indigenous rights advocates such as Sarah Lee and Johnson Jament, this commitment offers hope. However, they insist it should not be at face value. Rather, indigenous representatives should be involved in shaping the agenda, designing discussions and influencing the commitments that emerge from the meeting.
This year's conference proved that global ocean governance is becoming more open to grassroots voices. Canada's commitment to strengthening Indigenous knowledge at the 2027 Our Ocean Conference adds a new chapter to that inclusion discussion.