AtlantECO-KER-AR-2

This policy brief highlights the urgent need to align scientific innovation with marine policy, enhance transatlantic cooperation across Europe, Africa, and South America, and accelerate the uptake of bio-based and nature-based solutions to support a Sustainable Blue Economy. Despite a robust framework of international and European policies, implementation remains fragmented, with limited integration of scientific knowledge into policy. Marine microbiomes represent a promising frontier for sustainability, offering new opportunities for environmental restoration and economic growth. However, realizing their potential requires coherent regulatory frameworks and equitable access and benefit-sharing mechanisms. The AtlantECO project demonstrates the power of interdisciplinary research, collaborative innovation networks, and evidence-based policy to tackle ocean challenges across the Atlantic basin. Key recommendations in this brief focus on reinforcing transatlantic collaboration, improving the science-policy interface, and building shared systems for ocean knowledge and innovation. These measures are essential to advancing climate resilience, ocean health, and equitable economic development throughout the All-Atlantic community. The brief ultimately aims to elevate awareness, build capacity, promote responsible practices, and catalyse a Blue Growth strategy that unites the All-Atlantic region, aligned with AtlantECO’s mission.

This policy brief explores the challenges and opportunities for fostering equitable, long-term international scientific cooperation in ocean sciences across the Atlantic. Developed through collaboration between European, Brazilian, and South African partners working in the EU-funded AtlantECO project, this policy brief highlights the need for fair, ethical, and inclusive research practices that respect different cultures and local realities. Despite various international agreements, significant barriers remain, including disparities in research capacity, funding, and technology access. Bureaucratic hurdles and the prevalence of “parachute science” further limit meaningful collaboration. Strengthening infrastructure, streamlining administrative processes, promoting research mobility, expanding open-access research, and fostering co-funding mechanisms are essential steps toward a more balanced research landscape. This brief advocates for a more inclusive and effective approach to Ocean science by addressing these challenges, ensuring equitable participation in marine research and supporting sustainable ocean management.

This policy brief highlights the strategic importance of the Ocean microbiome genetic resource within the interconnected frameworks of One Ocean and One Health, recognising that ocean ecosystem health, climate regulation, biodiversity, and human wellbeing are deeply interdependent. Marine microorganisms underpin global biogeochemical cycles, support marine food webs and fisheries, and provide vast genetic diversity with major potential for innovation in biotechnology, healthcare, environmental remediation, aquaculture, and climate mitigation. As such, the Ocean microbiome represents both a critical scientific frontier and a major socio-economic opportunity. The brief emphasises that Digital Sequence Information (DSI) derived from marine genetic resources circulates globally, creating governance challenges for existing Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) frameworks under the CBD and the emerging BBNJ Agreement. Because the ocean spans Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ), and because DSI can move independently of physical samples, ensuring transparency, traceability, and equitable benefit-sharing is complex. Jurisdictional fragmentation, incomplete metadata standards, and limited interoperability across databases further complicate monitoring and reporting. Analysis of international sequence databases reveals significant geographic imbalances: the majority of Ocean microbiome samples originate from the Northern Hemisphere and from EEZs, while access to these resources is overwhelmingly dominated by countries in the Global North. These disparities highlight capacity gaps between regions and reinforce concerns about equity in the digital age. The brief calls for strengthened monitoring and reporting protocols for DSI, including mandatory and harmonised metadata standards, coordinated integration of access metrics across major data platforms, and improved interoperability among diverse data repositories. It further supports governance approaches that balance open science with fair and equitable benefit-sharing, alongside targeted capacity-building to ensure broader global participation. By aligning science, policy, and equity, the Ocean microbiome genetic resource can be governed in a way that advances sustainable development, strengthens the blue economy, and delivers on the principles of One Ocean, One Health.