‘The Ocean We Want’

Abstract The ongoing United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–30) promises to be a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity for states to cooperate towards ‘The Science We Need for the Ocean We Want’ in accordance with the Law of the Sea Convention. The Decade aims to encourage national investment in ocean science as ‘the only possibility’ to transform ‘the ocean we have’ into ‘the ocean we want’. The desired shift gestures to a better ocean that is within reach if states spent more on it. This chapter situates the Ocean Decade within the longer history of institutional debates on the ocean and its place in development. It argues that the Ocean Decade is the latest restatement of the claim that better ocean science generates economic growth, a claim that has persisted in institutional accounts of development since the Second UN Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1960.