The 2025 UN Ocean Conference opens in Nice, France on Monday, as ocean governance is undergoing what political scientists Kevin Parthenay and Rafael Mesquita describe as “a cycle of consolidation”. They argue it should include adoption of an agreement to protect biodiversity in the high seas; negotiation of an unfinished treaty on marine plastic pollution; full implementation of a WTO agreement on fisheries subsidies; and the adoption of the International Seabed Authority’s mining code. The UN event comes less than two months after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to accelerate the issuance of deep-sea mining permits in domestic and international waters. The authors provide a brief history of marine governance, including the turn toward environmentalism in the 1990s that prefigures some current trends, and emphasise that more multilateral efforts are needed amid “the frantic quest for critical minerals” and other urgent issues.

A German court last week dismissed Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya’s lawsuit against European coal giant RWE, which sought to force it to help pay for a dam to protect his home city in the Andean foothills from a potential glacial flood. But the court also concluded that private companies can, in principle, be held liable for climate damages, a finding that has major ramifications for other legal battles to hold fossil fuel companies accountable. Benjamin Franta, who leads the Climate Litigation Lab at the University of Oxford, writes that the ruling comes amid broad public support for lawsuits aiming to force “big carbon” to pay up.

Frying tinned sardines in the olive oil or tomato sauce they came with can seem like a modest culinary pleasure, but it may not be a good long-term choice for your health. Researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela have found that derivatives from bisphenol A, a hazardous compound, in the coatings of some cans can reach food through a process called migration, which is more likely to occur if the comestibles have a high fat content. The European Commission recently banned bisphenol A in food contact materials; good practices, the researchers write, are to avoid reusing that in-tin oil and sauce, and forget about the old campfire trick of directly heating a can ‘o beans.