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he adoption of the BBNJ Agreement concluded a decades-long dispute over how MGRs of ABNJ should be legally classified and how benefits, particularly monetary benefits, derived from the utilisation and commercialisation of these MGRs, should be shared. The outcome represented a legally creative compromise bridging the opposing positions of the Global North and South on these issues. This article argues that the BBNJ regime should be understood less as a final resolution of distributive conflict and more as a reconfiguration of ocean justice through the deferral of equity claims.

Understanding the spatial ecology of wide-ranging marine megafauna is essential for identifying critical habitats and designing effective conservation strategies. Whale sharks undertake extensive movements far beyond well-studied aggregation sites, yet the spatial structure and environmental drivers of these movements remain poorly resolved.

Deep in the dry tropical forest of Malolo Island, Peter Harlow freezes mid-step. The retired biologist from Sydney’s Taronga Zoo raises his flashlight to cut through the heavy Fijian darkness. To the untrained eye, the canopy is just a monochromatic tangle of leaves. But to Harlow, the light reveals a ghostly reflection—a whitish glow against the dark foliage that signals life.

"There he is," Harlow whispers, pointing to a high branch in a Tahitian chestnut tree. Clinging to the wood is a Fijian crested iguana, a small, emerald-green lizard that looks like a miniature dragon.

An interdisciplinary team at the University of Miami discovered a new way to help lab-grown baby corals survive through the often-difficult early life stage. By growing these tiny baby corals on cement tiles formulated with sodium carbonate, which raises the alkalinity of the water, a research team was able to show that young mountainous star corals are able to survive much better than the average lab-grown corals. And because survivorship among these young corals is often challenging, the technique could prove useful for coral restoration efforts across the globe.

Around the world, people plan to plant more than 1 trillion trees this decade in an ambitious effort to slow climate change and reduce biodiversity loss. But if the past is prologue, many of those planted trees won’t survive. And if they do, they could end up as biological deserts that lack the richness and resilience of healthy forests.

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Assessing the impacts of rapid environmental change on coral reefs is hindered by a discrepancy between the regions with the greatest need and those that receive the most research funding. Remote sensing, particularly through the use of drones [or unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs)], has the potential to significantly enhance the accessibility and efficiency of high-quality data collection in remote, biodiverse areas such as the Coral Triangle.

The importance of coral reefs cannot be overstated. Despite covering a small fraction of the world’s surface area, they represent crucial marine habitats that are among the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and they also provide vital contributions to coastal protection and the nutrition and livelihoods of millions of people. Yet their future is increasingly uncertain owing to rapid ocean warming, acidification and intensifying local pressures from pollution and overfishing. The urgency of safeguarding coral reefs has never been clearer.

Animals that cross borders often encounter conservation systems that stop at them. Migratory species move through jurisdictions with little regard for political boundaries, relying on habitats spread across large distances and governed by different rules. The result is patchy protection, overlapping threats, and declining populations.

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to stop biodiversity losses1. Approximately 60% of tropical forests have already been lost or severely degraded2, making restoration essential to achieve conservation goals. Recovery trajectories of trees have been studied intensively3,4, but a comprehensive understanding of biodiversity recovery is lacking.

Forest loss is a significant global problem. Forest certification schemes and protected areas are two key approaches for improving forest conservation and management outcomes, but their effectiveness in reducing national-level forest loss remains unclear. Here, we analysed an 11-year high-resolution satellite dataset on tree canopy removal from 2013 to 2023 to assess associations between forest loss, certification, protection, and economic factors globally.