Religious leaders, artisanal fishers, Indigenous custodians, scientists, and ocean governance officials will gather Monday, 15th June 2026, at the Mombasa Continental Resort for the Ocean Interfaith Forum.
The Ocean Interfaith Forum is a one-day event convened to bring the moral authority of coastal communities into global ocean governance.
The meeting is set to take place just one day before Kenya hosts the 11th Our Ocean Conference (OOC11), the first time this flagship global summit lands on African soil.
The forum will bring together approximately 50 invited participants: senior faith leaders representing the religious communities of the Kenyan coast, including Islamic, Christian and Hindu traditions whose histories are woven into the Swahili shoreline; Indigenous spiritual authorities and traditional custodians; artisanal fishers; civil society organisations working on marine conservation; Kenyan county and national government representatives; and scientific and theological advisors.
The centrepiece of the day is the global launch of Faiths for 30×30: The Faith High Ambition Coalition for Ocean and Nature Action, a new platform through which faith communities of every size, from a single coastal mosque to a global denomination, register concrete, time-bound pledges to protect the ocean and report annually on progress.
Pledge categories span education, direct stewardship of coastal sites, advocacy with policymakers, community mobilisation and financial divestment from ocean-harming industries.
Structured discussions will address the alignment of faith commitments with the global 30×30 conservation target, the intersection of faith with fisheries and a ‘reef assembly’ that invites participants to give voice to Kenya’s bleaching coral ecosystems.
Mombasa’s blue economy is under severe and compounding pressure.
The county’s Beach Management Units (BMUs), the frontline institutions responsible for supporting artisanal fishers and governing coastal resources, are beset by governance failures: leadership instability and a deep mistrust between fishing communities and government authorities that impedes data collection, monitoring and enforcement.
Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing continues to strain already thinning fish stocks. Gender-based violence, including the practice of ‘sex for fish’, remains documented in coastal fishing communities, compounding HIV/AIDS vulnerability. Drug use is also prevalent among fisherfolk.
Efforts to provide alternative livelihoods through initiatives such as skills training, ecotourism, and Village Savings and Lending Associations (VSLAs) have delivered mixed results and a World Bank-supported livelihoods programme in the county is reaching the end of its project cycle.
Against this backdrop, the international community’s commitment to protect 30% of the world’s ocean by 2030, enshrined in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and reinforced by the new UN high seas BBNJ treaty, risks remaining a target on paper.
Marine Protected Areas exist in policy documents, but without community trust, functioning grievance mechanisms and viable alternative livelihoods, conservation frameworks can become tools of exclusion rather than sustainability.
Religious leaders and elders already play a documented conflict-resolution role in coastal communities; they represent the most underutilised asset in the conservation toolkit.
The Faiths for 30×30 Coalition converts that latent moral authority into a structured, accountable contribution to international ocean governance. An imam addressing a fishing village congregation every Friday has more direct reach into fishing behaviour than most regulatory frameworks. A women’s religious network running a savings group can integrate sustainable fisheries teaching into existing community structures.
A traditional custodian of a sacred coastal site can become a recognised partner in protecting that site under the 30×30 framework.
The Coalition registers these contributions on a public, searchable platform and tracks them against the Global Biodiversity Framework and BBNJ milestones, making faith-led ocean action visible and accountable alongside the pledges of governments and corporations.
The forum sits within the broader OOC11 architecture alongside the Youth Leadership Summit, the OOC Research Symposium and the Executive Business and Investment Forum.
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