Dear friends,
We invite you to join the Second Conference of the Ocean Peoples (C-OP2) a global political summit organised by the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) on 8 and 9 June 2025, online.
C-OP is a fisher people’s summit organised in direct rejection of the corporate-led UN Ocean Conference 2025 (UNOC3) in Nice, France. As resolved at the WFFP General Assembly (Brasília, 2024), we are boycotting UNOC3 and instead building C-OP2 as a space of global resistance and collective reimagination. While UNOC3 reinforces state capture, exclusion, and corporate control through false solutions like blue bonds, blue carbon, 30×30, and marine spatial planning, C-OP2 centres the voices of the people of the oceans and inland waters—those who defend and depend on marine commons every day.
Organised by and for fisher peoples from more than 50 countries, C-OP2 will bring together Indigenous communities, coastal and inland fishers, seafood gatherers, fisherwomen’s movements, UN rapporteurs, academics, and solidarity networks. Together, we will expose and resist the ongoing assault on our waters, while asserting the demands and political vision of ocean peoples. C-OP2 is not symbolic. It is a frontline.
Dates: 8 and 9 June 2025
Time: 3:00 PM CET / 6:30 PM Sri Lanka / 7:00 AM Belize (2.5 hours per day)
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81076834799?pwd=SXO4GXneFyNiYc7u9TkeZVSujay4kb.1
Meeting ID: 810 7683 4799
Passcode: 371065
The central theme for C-OP2 is “Defying Colonial Capitalism: Union for the Future of Earth & Oceans.” This summit is grounded in the five Rs of our resistance: Reject false solutions, Resist the blue economy, Recognise our customary rights, Restitute marine governance to communities, and Reimagine our future within oceans and waters through justice and healing.
On Day 1 (8 June, Ocean Day), we focus on the dangerous trajectory of UNOC3 and the expanding blue regimes. Sessions will address the new frontiers of ocean grabbing: blue economy, blue foods, marine geoengineering, industrial aquaculture, marine spatial planning, sea-bed mining, port-led infrastructure, WTO fisheries reforms, and conservation strategies like 30×30 that push fortress conservation while criminalising traditional fisher livelihoods.
On Day 2 (9 June), titled “Waters Rise”, we assert our demands for recognition, redistribution, reclamation, and reparations. Discussions will centre maritorial rights (which encompass marine, coastal, and inland customary territorial claims), the role of fisherwomen, the right to fish and defend territories, and the need to go beyond ‘small-scale’ to fully embrace our identity as water peoples with ecological, legal, cultural, and political rights.
C-OP2 builds on the legacy of our first conference in 2022, which you can revisit at http://blueeconomytribunal.org/c-op-home. Today, we renew that spirit with greater urgency—at a time when imperialism, authoritarianism, and militarised climate governance are accelerating violence, hunger, displacement, and ecological loss for our communities.
From Palestine to Panama, Sri Lanka to Senegal, our fisher communities, especially women, Indigenous peoples, and youth, are resisting. We are not here to tick participation boxes—we are here to set the agenda and demand justice.
We are the oceans. We are the waters. We are the peoples.
Our Ocean. Our Sovereignty. Our Future.
We hope you will join us. Please circulate this invitation widely and stand with us in solidarity and struggle.
In resistance,
World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP)
🌐 www.wffp.net | @wffpworldwide
🔗 http://blueeconomytribunal.org/c-op-home