One of world's richest men is spending $260M to protect international waters

Michael Bloomberg has pledged US$260 million to fund the first protected areas on the high seas, stepping in with private money just as the U.S. and U.K. scale back ocean and climate spending.

Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the commitment June 23 at the Earthshot Prize Impact Assembly during London Climate Action Week, that it targets the High Seas Treaty, the agreement that for the first time allows protected zones in international waters, which cover nearly half the planet's surface.

Governments have promised to protect 30% of the oceans by 2030. With four years left, about 10% is protected.

Bloomberg is worth about $109 billion, according to Forbes, ranking him among the 20 wealthiest people in the world. Much of that fortune comes from the company's Bloomberg Terminal, the trading-floor data service whose subscriptions run about $32,000 a year.

Bloomberg Philanthropies says the pledged money will help identify, establish and police the first marine reserves under the treaty. The pledge takes its total ocean spending to $635 million.

"The High Seas Treaty shows that the world has the will to protect the ocean," Bloomberg, who built his fortune through the financial-data company Bloomberg LP, told Sky News. "This investment will help ensure we have the way."

The treaty took effect Jan. 17, the United Nations said, 120 days after Morocco became the 60th country to ratify it. It is now law, but how it will be funded and policed in remote, fish-rich waters is unresolved.

The U.S. and the U.K. are both trimming climate, nature and science budgets.

The U.K, as it scrambles to raise defense spending, will cut international climate and environmental funding from £11.6 billion ($15.3 billion) to £9 billion over five years, the trade outlet edie reported after the Treasury confirmed the reduction.

A rule that ring-fenced £3 billion ($4 billion) of it for nature, including coastlines, will be scrapped, The Guardian reported.

In the U.S., President Donald Trump has cut ocean science, aid and environment programs, Sky News reported, though both countries remain among the world's top five aid donors.

Bloomberg has filled federal gaps before. In 2025 he covered a shortfall in the budget of the U.N. climate body, the UNFCCC, after Trump withdrew U.S. funding.

"It's a pivotal time for our ocean," Tom Brook, an ocean conservation specialist at WWF, told Sky News, calling the treaty an "unprecedented opportunity to protect the ocean at the scale it operates."

Some of the money will help small coastal and island nations get a seat at negotiations dominated by richer countries. Lord Fatafehi Fakafanua, the prime minister of Tonga, said in a statement the funding would help nations like his "play their rightful role in shaping the future of our shared ocean."

Brian O'Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, told Sky News governments should be "delivering on commitments," "not relying on untenable and unrealistic hopes that philanthropy will foot the bill."

The European Union is moving the other way. It wants to become the "global leader in ocean intelligence" through OceanEye, a sea-monitoring program backed by €92 million ($105 million), the European Commission said. The program is far smaller than the nearly $370 million U.S. ocean-observatory network dismantled under the Trump administration's science cuts, Oceanographic magazine reported.

A U.K. government spokesperson told Sky News the "world has changed" and that the aid budget had been cut to "fund a necessary increase in defense spending," while insisting the country's "commitment to tackling climate change and nature loss has not changed." Funding for Ukraine, Sudan and Palestine would be protected, the spokesperson said.