Marine Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx Please cite this article as: Siddharth Shekhar Yadav, Kristina Maria Gjerde, Marine Policy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2020.104184 0308-597X/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The ocean, climate change and resilience: Making ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction more resilient to climate change and other anthropogenic activities Siddharth Shekhar Yadav a, * , Kristina Maria Gjerde b a Permanent Mission of the Republic of Vanuatu to the United Nations (Advisor on Climate Change, Oceans and BBNJ to the Ambassador/Permanent Representative), New York, USA b International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), (Advisor to the Global Marine and Polar Programme), Cambridge, MA, USA A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Resilience Climate change Ocean governance Biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) International law of the sea ABSTRACT The ocean is threatened by climate change, overexploitation, pollution, habitat loss, and other pressures as well as their cumulative impacts. Over 60% of the ocean that lies in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) is particularly vulnerable. Many are seeking practical measures to make the ocean more resilient. This paper evaluates how key ingredients for enhancing resilience might be applied to ABNJ management and governance. In doing so, it aims to enhance the resilience of both marine ecosystems as well as their governance systems. It also throws light on how the emerging treaty on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) could contribute to it. A BBNJ treaty based on principles and ap- proaches to safeguard resilience could help marine ecosystems cope with the growing anthropogenic threats and improve the effectiveness of management activities. 1. Introduction The global ocean is under severe environmental stress caused by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, which in- teracts and overlaps with the impacts of other anthropogenic activities including overfshing, dumping of waste, and pollution from a range of sources [1–3]. These multiple harmful activities and their consequences do not act in isolation but have serious cumulative impacts on the ocean [4,5]. Moreover, these problems may be further compounded with the increasing interest in seabed mining and potentially other new activities. Over 60% of the ocean that lies in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) is particularly vulnerable to these growing anthropogenic threats [6–8]. This vulnerability of biodiversity in ABNJ is linked to its existing sectoral and fragmented management system which lacks global coor- dination mechanisms, or cooperation and harmonization among global and regional actors [7,9,10]. Human activities occurring in ABNJ are mainly regulated sector by sector through multiple sectoral organiza- tions including regional fsheries management organizations (RFMOs) including some under the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Seabed Authority (ISA), and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) [6,8,11]. The coordination and integration among a number of key issues including biodiversity, pollution, climate and fsheries is weak despite the extensive range of global and regional conventions and other arrangements [12]. Moreover, the current level of political awareness of what is required to enhance ocean resilience, and consequently, how resilience might be incorporated into existing and new legal and institutional frameworks is not suffcient to address the multitude of growing anthropogenic threats [7,13,14]. The emerging treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) was launched to fll the gaps in the existing ABNJ management system [15]. At the same time, it also provides an opportunity to build resilience in ABNJ. Section 2 highlights the primary climate change consequences and associated impacts on the ocean in ABNJ. It then introduces the concept of resilience as well as the resilience approach in the context of socio-ecological systems, i.e., integrated systems of human and nature with interacting social and ecological mechanisms [17]. There is a substantial literature on resilience and the key principles and guidelines to build resilience in socio-ecological systems, upon which the current ABNJ management could draw (see section 2.2). Section 3 throws light on the application of the resilience principles in the context of the ocean * Corresponding author. E-mail address: sid.shekhar.un@gmail.com (S.S. Yadav). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Marine Policy journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2020.104184 Received 26 February 2020; Received in revised form 9 August 2020; Accepted 12 August 2020