Just 10% of the world’s oceans have been designated for conservation, with efforts to protect more lagging behind, according to a new analysis.

The report - The Ocean Gap Protection Report 2026 - published today by a consortium of NGOs and funders, warns the amount of ocean area designated for conservation is set to increase to just 12% by 2030

It also reveals around $1.8 billion a year currently flows to ocean protection efforts.

It argues this is a fraction of the $16 billion needed to deliver previously agreed targets of protecting and conserving at least 30% of the ocean by 2030.

“The expansion of marine protected and conserved areas is also not yet matched by the conditions needed to deliver effective implementation,” the report states.

According to the study, only 3.5% of the global ocean is assessed as effectively protected, meaning harmful or destructive activity is excluded or reduced within those areas.

And where safeguards are designated for essential ecosystems, the study concludes only a small share are assessed as being effectively protected.

For example, a third of mangroves are reported as protected but just 0.3% are effectively protected, while 47% of warm-water corals lie within protected areas but less than 10% are effectively protected.

“Countries are showing that effective protection is possible, but it requires more than designation alone,” the report adds.

“Examples from Chile, Palau and elsewhere demonstrate that ocean protection can be successful if underpinned by effective governance, long-term finance, community leadership, enforcement and monitoring.”

The report adds Samoa and Portugal have increased their effective protection to 25.6% and 9.5% respectively, whilst Indonesia has committed to assess the effectiveness of 19.1 million hectares of existing marine protection areas.

The ocean report has been published alongside another study - 30x30 Global Assessment - which looks at global progress towards previously agreed international targets to conserve at least 30% of land and ocean by 2030.

Pauli Merriman, the senior director for oceans at WWF International, said the oceans will be one of the decisive frontiers in achieving that goal of 30% conservation by 2030, during an online press conference.

Merriman added there has been “real progress” with 10% of the oceans now designated as protected or conserved, compared to a figure of 8.6% last year.

“The task ahead is no longer simply to raise ambition, but to accelerate implementation,” she said.

“And while 10% of the ocean is reported as protected, only 3.5% is assessed as effectively protected, meaning there is a significant gap between protection on paper and protection in practice.”

But Merriman added the report highlights how effective protection is possible, particularly in places like Indonesia where community leadership, long-term management, and investment are helping to turn commitments into results.

“Governments must now move quickly to build the scientific, institutional, and governance foundations needed for a credible first wave of high seas learning protected areas, and we must ensure they are effective from the outset,” she said.

Lance Morgan, the president of the Marine Conservation Institute, said governments must accelerate action in national waters, while harnessing the opportunity of the High Seas Treaty, in a statement.

Morgan added the majority of existing marine protected areas are still not delivering effective conservation.

“Closing that gap means turning commitments into real protection on the water - effectively managed, properly financed and safeguarded from destructive activities - so that these areas deliver lasting benefits for biodiversity, communities and economies,” said Morgan.

And Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, said implementing the High Seas Treaty which entered into force earlier this year, represents the biggest opportunity to “supersize progress” in a statement.

But she added it can only deliver high seas marine protected areas if the rules, bodies and processes agreed at its first Conference of Parties in January are built to match this ambition.

“Countries need to ratify, show up ready and motivated to act, commit to sufficient funding, and bring a tangible plan and timetable for putting MPA proposals on the table for agreement ahead of 2030,” said Hubbard.