Panel speakers (from left to right), Kristina Gjerde, Senior High Seas Advisor, IUCN Global Marine and Polar Programme, Richard Page oceans expert and report author, Sandra Schoettner and Veronica Frank (Greenpeace).

A delegation of Greenpeace representatives attend the second session of the Intergovernmental Conference on an international legally instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction.

As governments meet at the UN to negotiate towards an historic Global Ocean Treaty, a groundbreaking study by leading marine biologists has mapped out how to protect over a third of the world's oceans by 2030, a target that scientists say is crucial in order to safeguard wildlife and to help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

The report, 30x30: A Blueprint For Ocean Protection is the result of a year-long collaboration between leading academics at the University of York, University of Oxford and Greenpeace Researchers broke down the global oceans, and then mapped the distribution of 458 different conservation features, including wildlife, habitats and key oceanographic features, generating hundreds of scenarios for what a planet-wide network of ocean sanctuaries, free from harmful human activity, could look like.