Like many other international processes involving travelling and meeting activity, the COVID-19 pandemic has also affected the process to elaborate an implementing Agreement under the Law of the Sea Convention on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ).  A fourth and last scheduled substantive session of the intergovernmental conference (IGC) aimed at negotiating the Agreement was supposed to have taken place in March 2020, but has been postponed to a date yet to be defined by the UN General Assembly.

A digital consultation process during the last months of 2020 on some of the key issues for the Agreement has been a successful and well-used waiting time that should  inspire other multilateral processes that are prevented from holding formal, physical meetings due to the pandemic.