ON 8 Jun 26, the UN released its 3rd World Ocean Assessment: the sea levels are rising at 4.3 mm per year, more than double the pre-2015 rate; 52 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean annually and only 27% of the ocean floor has ever been mapped. However, the report’s sharpest observation is institutional: ocean governance, across all sectors and jurisdictions, remains deeply fragmented. The ocean is managed as a set of separate sectoral interests when the pressures it faces are cumulative and interconnected. I attended a two-week Multilateral Seminar on Marine Sustainable Development in Xiamen, China, as part of Pakistan’s delegation under the China Aid Training framework with the Fujian Institute of Oceanography (FJIO). The lectures and field visits showed how China has spent the past three decades progressively bringing marine spatial planning, resource management, ecological protection and economic development into an integrated system, overcoming the fragmented approach identified in WOA III.
China’s marine functional zoning system integrates coastal restoration, recreation and commercialization within a single spatial framework, preventing these otherwise competing uses from conflicting. Operating across national, provincial and county levels for over 30 years and incorporated into the unified Real Property Rights certificate system since 2015, the system makes these allocations legally enforceable. Each sector occupies defined zones with binding conditions. Without an equivalent framework, allocation of Pakistan’s coastal space is often determined by whichever actor moves first. Pakistan’s Maritime Zones Act-2023 provides similar jurisdictional basis for marine resource management, environmental protection and licensing within the EEZ. However, the essential management layer on top, including functional zoning, transparent use-rights, cumulative-impact assessment and federal-provincial coordination remains missing. Without it, the expansion envisaged under the URAAN Pakistan Blue Economy 2026 framework, which projects $4 billion in additional impact by 2030 across aquaculture, ports, tourism, offshore energy and fisheries, could intensify competition among uses instead of enabling synergistic growth. These sectors, therefore, need a spatial plan showing where each can operate without undermining the others.
China’s ecological protection red lines offer a relevant lesson in this regard: embedding ecological limits directly into development planning can give conservation stronger footing than imposing restrictions after development decisions. Pakistan’s 03 Marine Protected Areas provide a foundation, but designation alone does not deliver protection. Effective governance demands ecological baselines, carrying-capacity assessments, monitoring, surveillance and sustainable financing. Considering this planning approach, China’s marine ranching is a testament that ecological protection can be harmonized with a viable economic model. China combines artificial reefs, multi-trophic aquaculture and climate-resilient infrastructure as mutually reinforcing instead of competing investments. The Guangdong program alone has deployed over 15 Mm³ of artificial reef, raising primary productivity by 64% across 19,500 hectares of seabed. Turning this potential into sustainable development, however, requires a sturdier scientific foundation. Governance without data is, in the end, governance by assumption.
In Jan 26, Pakistan Navy deployed PNS BEHR MASAH in support of a Pakistan-China Joint Oceanographic Cruise, conducted by the NIO with China’s Second Institute of Oceanography. FJIO, the host of the seminar, operates its own research vessel and leads active international scientific initiatives of this scale. Expanding this collaboration into systematic baseline mapping of the North Arabian Sea would provide Pakistan with the critical scientific infrastructure upon which effective marine governance ultimately rests. That scientific foundation shall become more consequential as ocean governance evolves. The BBNJ Agreement establishes a new framework for marine genetic resources, area-based management tools, EIAs, capacity-building and technology transfer. With the first COP approaching, Pakistan’s timely ratification and early engagement could help in articulating its interests in benefit-sharing, technology transfer and developing-country participation. Its earlier leadership of the G-77 and China during the BBNJ negotiations provides useful diplomatic clout for that role. China’s bid to host the BBNJ Secretariat in Xiamen, meanwhile, adds another dimension to the partnership and could provide regional representation for scientific and institutional cooperation in ocean governance.
For us, the lesson from China is not to reproduce a centralized model, but to connect the systems in place. Spatial planning needs scientific assessment; ecological limits need to inform development decisions; and sectoral policies need to work within a common framework. This is especially relevant as debate around a possible 28th Constitutional Amendment raises broader questions about administrative restructuring and, according to recent reporting, the status of Karachi and Gwadar. Whatever form such changes may take, they make the question of who governs what along Pakistan’s coast increasingly important. Building marine spatial governance into that wider institutional architecture now would be far easier than trying to retrofit it later.
—The writer is a Research Associate at the National Institute of Maritime Affairs (NIMA), Islamabad. Views expressed are their own.
