Jeddah Convention 1982 (PERSGA): Red Sea + Gulf of Aden environment

Background: PERSGA + the Red Sea + Gulf of Aden region

The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden together form one of the most distinctive marginal-sea systems on the planet. The Red Sea is a long, narrow, deep rift basin running roughly 2,250 km from the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba in the north to the Bab-el-Mandeb strait at its southern entrance, with a mean width of approximately 280 km, a surface area of around 440,000 km² and a maximum depth in the central trough of about 3,040 m at the Suakin Trough off the Sudanese coast. The Gulf of Aden extends from the Bab-el-Mandeb eastward to the Cape Guardafui-Socotra line, with a surface area of approximately 232,000 km², a length of around 920 km and a maximum depth in excess of 5,000 m in the Sheba Ridge. The combined regional sea area is approximately 672,000 km².

The basin is biologically and oceanographically distinctive on several counts. It is the warmest large body of seawater on Earth, with summer surface temperatures routinely exceeding 32 °C in the southern Red Sea; it is the saltiest of the major seas at around 40 PSU; it has an extremely high evaporation rate of approximately 2 m per year balanced by inflow from the Gulf of Aden; and it hosts coral-reef ecosystems whose thermal tolerance window is wider than that of any other tropical reef province. The Red Sea is a young rift basin (active spreading at approximately 1 cm per year) and the only active oceanic-spreading site adjacent to a major shipping lane. The basin’s hydrography, biology and geomorphology make the regulatory regime under the Jeddah Convention specifically tailored to a hyper-saline, deep, narrow, heavily-trafficked rift sea rather than to the more common shelf-and-slope marginal-sea geometry.

By the late 1970s the basin had become one of the world’s most strategically important shipping corridors, carrying approximately 12 percent of global trade through the Suez-Bab-el-Mandeb-Gulf of Aden chain on the route between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm and the 1974 launch of the UNEP Regional Seas Programme under Mostafa Tolba catalysed a wave of regional-sea negotiating processes from the mid-1970s onwards: the Mediterranean Barcelona Convention 1976, the Persian Gulf Kuwait Convention 1978, the Caribbean Cartagena Convention 1983, the West African Abidjan Convention 1981 and the Eastern African Nairobi Convention 1985. The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden process accelerated under the auspices of the Arab League, the Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union) and UNEP, and culminated in the Jeddah conference of February 1982. The intermediate Action Plan for the Conservation of the Marine Environment and Coastal Areas in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden had been adopted at the Jeddah preparatory conference of 1976, and the 1982 Convention codified that Action Plan into a binding regional instrument.

1982 Jeddah signing + 1985 entry into force

The Jeddah Convention was opened for signature at the Jeddah conference on 14 February 1982 by the seven basin states (Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan and the then-Yemen Arab Republic and People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, treated as a single party after the 1990 unification). All of the participating states signed the parent Convention and the founding Emergency Protocol at the conference. The Convention entered into force on 20 August 1985 following the deposit of the fifth instrument of ratification, in conformity with Article XXVII of the Convention text.

The Convention text is structured as a framework instrument: 29 Articles, no Annexes and a single accompanying Protocol on emergency cooperation adopted at the same conference. The brevity is characteristic of the Regional Seas family of the period. Substantive obligations on biodiversity, protected areas and land-based activities were deferred to subsequent Protocols, which were not adopted until the 2005 Jeddah meeting and not brought into force until 2015 and 2017 respectively. The 1982 text is therefore best understood as the legal-political backbone of the regime, with the operational obligations carried by the Protocols.

The Convention has not been amended since 1982. Several amendment proposals were considered through the PERSGA Council of Plenipotentiaries during the 2010s, including a proposal to bring the EEZ explicitly into the Convention area (in line with the 2010 Mahé amendment of the Nairobi Convention) and a proposal to integrate climate-adaptation obligations, but neither has produced a Conference of Plenipotentiaries amendment text as of 2026. The principal mechanism for keeping the regime current is the periodic PERSGA Action Plan cycle (2017-2022 followed by 2023-2027), which adapts the operational programme without reopening the Convention text.

Protocols in force: reference table

The three Protocols in force under the Jeddah Convention as of 2026, together with their key status details, are:

No Hazardous Wastes Protocol comparable to the Kuwait Convention 1998 Protocol has been adopted; transboundary hazardous-waste movements are governed by the global Basel Convention 1989 and by national legislation. No Continental Shelf Protocol comparable to the Kuwait Convention 1989 Protocol has been adopted; the offshore oil and gas regulatory regime operates under national legislation with PERSGA technical guidelines covering operational discharges, drilling-fluids management, produced-water management and decommissioning.

The 7 contracting parties

The Jeddah Convention has seven Contracting Parties as of 2026, the full set of states bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden as the political map stood at the time of negotiation:

• Djibouti: signed 14 February 1982; ratified 13 August 1988. Djibouti’s coastline is around 314 km and includes the Doraleh Multipurpose Port and the Doraleh Container Terminal, the principal commercial gateway for landlocked Ethiopia and the principal naval-cooperation hub for international counter-piracy and Bab-el-Mandeb security operations.
• Egypt: signed 14 February 1982; ratified 8 August 1990. Egypt’s Red Sea coastline is approximately 1,941 km, including the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba, and contains the strategically critical Suez Canal southern approach, the offshore oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Suez, and the major coral-reef tourism centres at Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada and Marsa Alam.
• Jordan: signed 14 February 1982; ratified 8 March 1989. Jordan has the shortest coastline of any Party at approximately 26 km, on the Gulf of Aqaba, but hosts the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority, the Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan reserves and the only Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan port city.
• Saudi Arabia: signed 14 February 1982; ratified 17 January 1985. Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coastline is approximately 1,840 km, the longest of any Party at the time of signing, and includes the major ports of Jeddah, Yanbu and the planned NEOM and Red Sea Project tourism developments. Host of PERSGA in Jeddah by the Headquarters Agreement.
• Somalia: signed 14 February 1982; ratified 8 February 1988. Somalia’s Gulf of Aden coastline is approximately 1,270 km from the Djibouti border to Cape Guardafui, with the major port of Berbera (in the autonomous Somaliland region) and the Bosaso port (in Puntland). The Somalian Federal Republic’s effective regulatory reach over the coast has been variable since the 1991 collapse of the Siad Barre government; the regional regime cooperates with the Federal Government, Somaliland and Puntland authorities through pragmatic operational arrangements.
• Sudan: signed 14 February 1982; ratified 9 January 1987. Sudan’s Red Sea coastline is approximately 750 km and contains Port Sudan, the only major Sudanese seaport and the loading terminal for the Sudanese oil-export pipeline from the South Sudan oilfields.
• Yemen: signed 14 February 1982 (by both the Yemen Arab Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen separately); ratified by the unified Republic of Yemen 5 December 1988 after the 1990 unification. Yemen’s coastline is approximately 1,906 km, comprising the Red Sea coast (Hodeida, Mocha, Salif), the Bab-el-Mandeb strait coast, the Gulf of Aden coast (Aden, Mukalla) and the Socotra Archipelago. The Yemeni Civil War since 2014-2015 has severely complicated the operational reach of the regime in Yemeni waters.

The Convention contains no opt-out, no provisional application and no special-status arrangements for any of the Parties. All seven states are full Parties on equal footing. There have been no withdrawals, no suspensions and no observer-Parties added.

Eritrea independence 1993: pending ratification

The political map of the Red Sea has changed in one significant respect since the 1982 Convention text. Eritrea, which had been part of Ethiopia in 1982 (then a non-coastal Red Sea state through the federation arrangement that had been imposed in 1962), achieved independence on 24 May 1993 following the 1991 EPLF military victory and the 1993 referendum. Eritrea has a coastline of approximately 2,234 km (longer than Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast), more than 350 islands in the Dahlak Archipelago and the southern Hanish Islands, and a strategic position adjacent to the Bab-el-Mandeb strait. The Eritrean coastline is also home to one of the most pristine large coral-reef provinces remaining globally, with limited coastal development and minimal tourism pressure.

Despite this strategic importance, Eritrea is not a Party to the Jeddah Convention as of 2026. The reasons are primarily political: the Eritrean government’s general reluctance to join multilateral regimes, the 1995-1998 Hanish Islands border dispute with Yemen (resolved in Yemen’s favour by arbitration in 1999), the 1998-2000 Eritrea-Ethiopia war and its aftermath, and Eritrea’s exclusion from much of the regional cooperation architecture during the 2000s and 2010s. The PERSGA Council has issued repeated formal invitations to Eritrea to accede to the Convention; informal cooperation through technical exchanges and observer participation has occurred at intervals, but no instrument of accession has been deposited.

The Eritrean non-membership produces a regulatory gap along the western shore of the southern Red Sea and the eastern entry to the Bab-el-Mandeb. The gap is partially covered through the operational arrangements with Saudi Arabia (along the median line in the central Red Sea), Sudan (along the Eritrea-Sudan land border continuation seaward) and Yemen (across the Bab-el-Mandeb), and through the absence of large-scale oil and gas activity or shipping infrastructure in Eritrean waters that would otherwise impose acute regulatory needs. The gap is nonetheless cited by PERSGA as the principal outstanding membership issue for the regime.

Geographical scope: ~672,000 km² Red Sea + GoA

Article II of the Jeddah Convention defines the Sea Area to which the Convention applies as the marine environment of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Gulf of Suez (south of the Suez Canal southern entrance), the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden, with the eastern boundary at a line from Cape Guardafui (Ras Asir) on the Somali coast through the southern part of Socotra Island to Ra’s Fartak on the Yemeni coast. The Convention does not extend to the Suez Canal itself (which is governed by the Constantinople Convention 1888 and operated by the Suez Canal Authority under Egyptian sovereignty) nor does it extend to the Mediterranean north of the Canal nor to the Indian Ocean east of the Cape Guardafui-Socotra line.

The sub-basins disaggregate approximately as: the Red Sea proper at around 440,000 km², the Gulf of Suez at around 27,000 km² (a shallow marginal embayment with mean depth around 70 m), the Gulf of Aqaba at around 1,800 km² (a narrow, deep basin with depths to 1,850 m), and the Gulf of Aden at around 232,000 km² (a much deeper Indian Ocean appendage with the Sheba Ridge spreading axis). The internal area is bounded entirely by the Parties’ territorial seas and EEZs (with the exception of the Eritrean coast as noted above) and contains no high-seas pocket inside the Convention area. The maritime boundaries between Parties have been progressively settled through bilateral agreement (Saudi Arabia-Egypt, Saudi Arabia-Sudan, Saudi Arabia-Jordan, Saudi Arabia-Yemen, Egypt-Jordan in the Gulf of Aqaba) and through arbitration where required (the 1999 Eritrea-Yemen Hanish Islands arbitration, the still-pending Egypt-Sudan Halayeb dispute on the political-boundary triangle).

The geographic envelope is deliberately tied to the natural marginal-sea geometry of the basin. The northern boundary at the Suez Canal southern entrance reflects the Convention’s exclusion of the Canal itself and of the Mediterranean. The eastern boundary at the Cape Guardafui-Socotra line reflects the operational division with the Nairobi Convention 1985 PERSGA-WIO interface, which is administratively the same line. The Yemeni Socotra Archipelago, which sits at the eastern end of the Gulf of Aden, is included within the Jeddah Convention area; its UNESCO World Heritage status (inscribed 2008) reinforces the regional protected-area cooperation framework.

Hydrography: ~3,040m max, ~40 PSU salinity, high evaporation

The Red Sea is the warmest, saltiest large body of seawater on Earth, and the central trough is the deepest narrow rift sea in active spreading globally. The maximum depth occurs at the Suakin Trough off the Sudanese coast; the deeper hot-brine pools (the Atlantis II Deep at around 2,200 m and the Discovery Deep at 2,180 m) host some of the most distinctive geochemical environments on the planet, with brines at 60+ °C and salinities exceeding 250 PSU. The Gulf of Aden Sheba Ridge reaches depths of around 5,200 m at the Alula-Fartak transform fault. The basin-mean depth of the Red Sea is approximately 490 m, much deeper than the Persian Gulf (around 35 m mean) or the Mediterranean’s shallower sub-basins.

The salinity regime is driven by the combination of high evaporation (approximately 2 m per year over the basin), low precipitation (less than 100 mm per year on average, much of which evaporates before reaching the surface), and zero river inflow (the catchments are arid and produce essentially no perennial discharge). The compensating inflow from the Gulf of Aden through the Bab-el-Mandeb is approximately 0.6 Sv (sverdrups, 600,000 m³/s) at the surface, with a counter-flow of around 0.5 Sv of denser, saltier Red Sea water exiting at depth and contributing to Indian Ocean intermediate water. The basin water-mass residence time is approximately 200 years, much longer than for the Persian Gulf or the Mediterranean, meaning any basin-wide pollutant accumulation is essentially permanent on policy-relevant time scales.

The thermal regime is unusual. Surface temperatures range from approximately 21 °C in the northern Gulf of Suez in winter to over 32 °C in the southern Red Sea in summer. The deep water below 200 m is uniformly around 21.7 °C, the warmest deep water of any sea. This unusual deep-water temperature is a consequence of the basin’s restricted exchange with the Gulf of Aden through the shallow (137 m) Hanish Sill and the resulting accumulation of warm, saline water at depth. The biological consequences (oxygen demand, coral-reef thermal tolerance, deep-water fauna distinctiveness) are central to the regulatory regime’s protected-area focus.

Suez Canal (1869) + Lessepsian migration

The Suez Canal was opened on 17 November 1869 under Khedive Isma’il Pasha of Egypt and the French-led Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez under Ferdinand de Lesseps. The Canal was nationalised by Egypt under President Gamal Abdel Nasser in July 1956, the trigger event for the Suez Crisis. The Canal connects the Mediterranean (Port Said) to the Gulf of Suez (Suez/Port Tewfik) over a length of approximately 193 km without locks, taking advantage of the small mean sea-level difference between the two seas.

The Canal’s most distinctive ecological consequence has been the Lessepsian migration: the unidirectional invasion of Mediterranean waters by Red Sea species (and to a much lesser extent the reverse). Since 1869, more than 800 Red Sea species have established populations in the eastern Mediterranean, with the rate of invasion accelerating since the 1970s salinity drop in the Bitter Lakes barrier (which had previously partially blocked invasion through hyper-salinity) and accelerating again following the 2015 New Suez Canal expansion. The most notorious invaders include the silver-cheeked toadfish (Lagocephalus sceleratus, a major fishery problem in the eastern Mediterranean), the rabbitfish (Siganus rivulatus and Siganus luridus, which have transformed eastern Mediterranean rocky-reef community structure) and the lionfish (Pterois miles, which has established along the Levantine and Adriatic coasts). The reverse migration (Anti-Lessepsian, Mediterranean to Red Sea) has been minimal because the higher Red Sea salinity acts as a filter on Mediterranean species adaptability.

The Lessepsian migration is not directly within the Jeddah Convention’s regulatory scope (the Canal and the Mediterranean are outside the Convention area), but it is treated as a co-regional issue under the PERSGA-Barcelona Convention cooperation framework, which has held joint sessions on Lessepsian invasive-species coordination since 2008. The Ballast Water Management Convention (BWM 2004, in force 2017) is a partial mechanical control on shipping-mediated biofouling and species transport between the basins, but the Canal’s open-channel hydraulic exchange remains the dominant pathway and is not amenable to BWM control.

Bab-el-Mandeb strait: critical chokepoint

The Bab-el-Mandeb (“Gate of Tears”) is the strait separating the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden, with a navigational width of approximately 26 km at its narrowest point between the Yemeni Ras Bab-el-Mandeb on the Arabian Peninsula and the Djiboutian Ras Siyyan on the African continent. The Perim Island (Yemeni) divides the strait into two channels: the western Dact-el-Mayun channel of around 16 km width and the eastern Alexander channel of around 3 km width. The depth at the strait sill is approximately 137 m at the central Hanish Sill, with the controlling navigational depth in the deep-water lanes well in excess of 100 m and adequate for all current commercial vessel sizes including ULCCs and the largest container ships.

The strait carries traffic in both directions on a Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) approved by the IMO and registered in the Ships’ Routeing publication. The TSS provides separated lanes for northbound (towards the Red Sea and the Suez Canal) and southbound (towards the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean) traffic, with a precautionary area at the strait centre. Pilotage is not compulsory through the strait. Vessels participate in the VHF reporting to the relevant coastal-state authorities (Djibouti, Yemen) and to the MSCHOA Voluntary Reporting Area for piracy and security risk management.

The Bab-el-Mandeb is one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints, comparable to the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Bosphorus and the Panama and Suez Canals. Approximately 50,000 vessels per year transited the Bab-el-Mandeb in the period 2018-2022, with the traffic peaking in the late 2010s before the 2023-2024 disruption. The strait carries oil and gas tankers from the Persian Gulf bound for the Mediterranean and Atlantic markets, container ships on the Asia-Europe trade, dry-bulk carriers, vehicle carriers and increasingly LNG carriers from the Qatar and US Gulf of Mexico LNG terminals.

~12% of global trade transits Red Sea

The Red Sea-Bab-el-Mandeb-Gulf of Aden corridor is the principal maritime artery between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, and through the Suez Canal between the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. The trade-share statistics are consistent across UNCTAD, IMF and the EIA at approximately 12 percent of global seaborne trade by volume in the pre-2023 reference period. Of the approximately 50,000 annual Bab-el-Mandeb transits, around 20,000 were Suez Canal transits in either direction (the remainder being intra-regional traffic, port calls within the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and vessels routing only as far north as the Saudi Arabian, Egyptian or Jordanian ports). The Suez Canal Authority reported transit revenues of approximately US$9.4 billion in 2022 and approximately US$10.3 billion in 2023, falling sharply to around US$4 to 5 billion in 2024 as the Houthi disruption diverted traffic around the Cape of Good Hope.

The trade carried through the corridor includes approximately 10 percent of global container traffic on the Asia-Europe trade lane, approximately 8 to 9 percent of global oil and refined-product seaborne movement, approximately 8 percent of global LNG traffic (rising rapidly with the new Qatari and US LNG export expansion), approximately 10 to 12 percent of global dry-bulk traffic on the Asia-Europe and Asia-Mediterranean trades, and a significant share of the global vehicle and roll-on/roll-off trade between Asian production centres and European markets. The corridor’s strategic importance is one of the principal arguments for upgrading the Jeddah Convention regime towards stronger routeing, response and emission control, an argument that has gained traction since 2024 following the demonstration of the corridor’s vulnerability.

Secretariat: PERSGA in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

The Regional Organization for the Conservation of the Environment of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden (PERSGA) is the executive body of the Convention, established under Article XVI as a separate regional intergovernmental organisation with full legal personality, headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia under the Headquarters Agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia signed in 1995 and updated through the 2010s. The organisation is governed by a Council composed of one representative from each of the seven Contracting Parties, supported by a permanent Secretariat headed by a Secretary General appointed by the Council for a renewable four-year term.

The Council meets in plenary at least once a year (the Council Ordinary Meeting) and may convene extraordinary sessions on the request of any three Parties. The chairmanship of the Council rotates among the Parties on an annual basis in alphabetical order. The Council adopts the regional work programme, the budget, the contribution scale, the technical guidelines, the operational plans for the regional Marine Emergency Mutual Aid Centre architecture and the regional environmental quality criteria. Decisions are taken by consensus for substantive matters and by majority for procedural matters, with the consensus rule reflecting the political sensitivity of the basin and the need for unanimous Arab-African agreement on substantive obligations.

The Secretariat employs around 30 to 40 international staff covering the technical, legal, financial, communications and administrative functions, plus a comparable number of project-funded staff for the regional programmes (the marine-pollution monitoring, the regional biodiversity programme, the Marine Protected Area network, the regional fisheries-coordination programme, the climate-adaptation programme and the integrated coastal-zone management programme). The Secretariat budget is around US$5 to 8 million per year, financed through assessed contributions from the Parties on a scale that reflects oil-export revenues and GDP, with the largest contributors being Saudi Arabia (the host) and Egypt.

PERSGA is a partner organisation of the UNEP Regional Seas Programme rather than a directly-administered UNEP regional-seas body. This distinction matters: PERSGA is fully independent of UNEP in its governance, secretariat and budget, and is constituted under the Convention text as a stand-alone international organisation with the State of Saudi Arabia as host. UNEP cooperation operates through the regional seas coordinator and through the joint participation in cross-regional initiatives. PERSGA also acts as the regional focal point for the IMO regional cooperation programmes, the IUCN Marine Programme for West Asia, the GEF International Waters portfolio, the Arab League environmental architecture and the African Union maritime strategy under AIM 2050.

Original 1982 Emergency Pollution Cooperation Protocol

The Protocol Concerning Regional Cooperation in Combating Pollution by Oil and Other Harmful Substances in Cases of Emergency was adopted at Jeddah on 14 February 1982 simultaneously with the parent Convention and entered into force on the same day, 20 August 1985. It is one of the regional response instruments adopted in the wave of the late 1970s and early 1980s, following the precedent of the Kuwait Emergency Protocol 1978 and the Barcelona Emergency Protocol 1976, and predating the global OPRC Convention 1990 by eight years.

The Protocol obliges each Party to develop a national contingency plan for oil and HNS spills, to designate a competent national authority as the focal point for regional coordination, to maintain reasonable national response capability, to report any spill exceeding a defined threshold to PERSGA and to the Parties whose interests may be affected, and to provide mutual assistance on request to a Party affected by a spill exceeding its response capacity. The Protocol provides the legal basis for the PERSGA regional emergency response system, which operates as a virtual centre coordinated through the Jeddah Secretariat rather than as a separate dedicated facility (in contrast to the ROPME-MEMAC architecture in the Persian Gulf).

The threshold for mandatory regional notification under the Protocol is a spill exceeding the response capacity of the affected Party or producing a transboundary plume; the operational threshold in the regional contingency plan is 50 tonnes of oil. The lower threshold reflects the basin’s ecological sensitivity (the coral-reef framework along almost the entire Red Sea coast), the high vessel traffic, and the relatively small response capacity of the smaller Parties (Djibouti, Jordan, Sudan, Somalia).

The Protocol has been operationally tested through several major and many minor incidents, including the 1990 Iran Naft tanker incident in the Bab-el-Mandeb, the 2002 Tasman Spirit incident off Karachi (a near-miss for the Gulf of Aden response community), the chronic operational discharges from the Gulf of Suez offshore oil and gas operations, and most recently the 2018-2023 FSO Safer crisis off the Yemeni coast (treated separately below).

Biodiversity + Protected Areas Protocol (Jeddah 2005, in force 2015)

The Protocol Concerning the Conservation of Biological Diversity and the Establishment of Network of Protected Areas in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden was adopted at Jeddah in 2005 and entered into force in 2015 following the deposit of the fourth instrument of ratification. It is the second-generation Protocol of the regime and brings the Jeddah Convention into alignment with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 1992) and the Aichi Targets adopted in 2010.

The Protocol obliges Parties to:

• Establish and maintain a regional network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) representative of the major Red Sea-GoA habitat types (coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves, soft sediments, deep-water habitats, key seabird and turtle nesting sites). The PERSGA MPA Network (PERSGA-MPAN) target is for at least 10 percent of the Convention area to be in MPA status by 2030, in line with the global Aichi 11 and the 30x30 Global Biodiversity Framework target of 30 percent by 2030.
• Identify and protect endangered, threatened or endemic species of the basin, with special protection for the dugong (Dugong dugon), the green turtle (Chelonia mydas), the hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata), the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), the giant clams (Tridacna spp.) and the regional endemic reef fishes.
• Implement environmental impact assessment procedures for activities likely to affect biological diversity, in alignment with the regional EIA guidelines adopted by the Council.
• Cooperate on transboundary species and habitat management, including on the Red Sea-GoA flyway for migratory shorebirds, the regional sea-turtle nesting and migratory networks, the dugong meta-population, and the regional reef-fish stocks.

As of 2026, the PERSGA MPA Network includes more than 35 designated MPAs across the seven Parties, totalling around 7 percent of the Convention area, with a pipeline of additional sites under designation expected to bring the total above 10 percent by 2028. The largest single MPA is the Egyptian Wadi El Gemal-Hamata National Park, followed by the Saudi Arabian NEOM-aligned coastal protected areas (which are still being formalised) and the Yemeni Socotra Archipelago Conservation Zoning Plan (the basis of the 2008 UNESCO World Heritage inscription).

Land-Based Activities Protocol (Jeddah 2005, in force 2017)

The Protocol Concerning the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities was adopted at Jeddah in 2005 alongside the Biodiversity Protocol and entered into force in 2017 following the deposit of the fourth instrument of ratification. It is the third-generation Protocol of the regime and brings the Jeddah Convention into alignment with the UNEP Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities (GPA, Washington 1995) and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs, 2001).

The Protocol covers the major land-based pollution pathways: municipal sewage (the largest single pollution load by volume), industrial effluents (concentrated at Jeddah, Yanbu, Aqaba, Suez and the Sudanese refining centres), agricultural run-off (limited in the arid catchments), persistent organic pollutants including PCBs, dioxins and DDT residues, heavy metals including mercury and cadmium from industrial sources, plastic and macro-litter (a rapidly growing component), atmospheric deposition of contaminants, and desalination plant brine discharge (a Red Sea-specific issue given the high concentration of large-scale desalination capacity in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and across the basin).

The Protocol establishes a regional reporting system through the PERSGA Secretariat, with Parties submitting annual reports on land-based pollution loads and on national measures to reduce them. The regional State of the Marine Environment Report is published every five years (the most recent being the PERSGA SOMER 2022). The Protocol does not contain quantitative emission-reduction targets analogous to the OSPAR PARCOM Recommendations or the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan; the regional approach is best-available-techniques (BAT) and best environmental practice (BEP) under nationally-determined implementation, with PERSGA providing technical guidance and capacity-building support.

The principal current focus of the Land-Based Activities Protocol is the regional management of plastic pollution, with the PERSGA Plastic Action Plan adopted in 2022 and the regional contributions to the UN Plastics Treaty negotiations under UNEP. The basin’s plastic load is dominated by mismanaged plastic from the major coastal cities (Jeddah, Aqaba, Suez, Massawa, Hodeida, Aden), by abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) from the regional artisanal fleet, and by ship-source litter that is technically governed by MARPOL Annex V but in practice continues to enter the basin.

Coral reef ecosystems + thermal tolerance

The Red Sea coral-reef province is among the most distinctive globally on three counts: it is one of the most extensive fringing-reef systems in the world (running essentially continuously along approximately 6,000 km of coastline from Sinai to Bab-el-Mandeb), it has the highest thermal tolerance of any major coral-reef province (a critical attribute in the era of climate-driven thermal bleaching), and it has a high regional endemism (approximately 14 percent of Red Sea reef-fish species are endemic, and a comparable proportion of corals).

The thermal tolerance is one of the most heavily-studied features of the basin in the post-2015 climate-stress literature. The northern Red Sea reefs (Gulf of Aqaba, northern Egyptian Red Sea, northern Saudi coast) have been observed to maintain coral-symbiont function at temperatures of 32 to 33 °C, around 5 to 6 °C above the regional bleaching threshold for most other reef provinces globally. The mechanism involves the basin’s geological history (the Last Glacial Maximum stranding of warm-water-adapted symbiont communities at the southern bottleneck and their subsequent re-expansion northward through warmer water), the relatively high baseline temperatures the corals experience year-round, and possibly a regional-genetic specialisation in the Symbiodiniaceae symbionts. The northern Red Sea is therefore widely regarded as one of the most important global climate-refugia for tropical reef ecosystems and is the focus of a multi-Party regional research and conservation programme coordinated through PERSGA.

The thermal-tolerance refugia value has been a principal driver of regional MPA designations under the Biodiversity Protocol since 2015, with several of the largest new MPAs (the Saudi NEOM-aligned coastal protected areas, the Egyptian Wadi El Gemal extensions, the Jordanian Marine Reserve expansion at Aqaba) targeting the climate-refugia argument explicitly. The IUCN Red List has classified the Red Sea coral-reef province as a “globally significant climate refuge” and several of the candidate sites are under consideration for nomination as UNESCO World Heritage Marine Sites under the climate-resilience criteria.

Endemic species: dugong, giant clams, sea turtles

Beyond the coral reefs, the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden basin hosts several large-vertebrate populations of regional and global conservation importance. The dugong (Dugong dugon), listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, has a residual Red Sea-GoA population of around 4,000 to 5,000 individuals concentrated in the seagrass meadows of the Saudi Farasan Bank, the Egyptian Marsa Alam-Halayeb area, the Yemeni Hodeida-Mocha coast and the Eritrean Dahlak Archipelago. The dugong is one of the principal flagship species of the regional Biodiversity Protocol and the focus of a PERSGA-IUCN coordinated regional conservation programme.

Five species of sea turtle nest in the basin: the green turtle (Chelonia mydas) in large numbers across the Saudi, Yemeni, Sudanese and Egyptian coasts; the hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) with major nesting sites at Ras al Hadd (Oman, just outside the Convention area but in the Gulf of Oman) and several Red Sea sites; the loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) in smaller numbers; the olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) at Yemeni Gulf of Aden sites; and the leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) as occasional foragers. The regional sea-turtle programme operates through PERSGA in cooperation with IUCN, the IOSEA Memorandum of Understanding (Indian Ocean and South-East Asia Marine Turtle MoU under CMS) and the regional NGOs.

The giant clams (Tridacna gigas, T. squamosa, T. maxima) are present throughout the basin and have been heavily harvested historically; T. gigas is now functionally extirpated from much of the basin, with conservation efforts focusing on the smaller species. The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is a regular seasonal visitor to the Red Sea, with the Saudi Al Lith aggregation and the Djiboutian Gulf of Tadjoura aggregation among the most predictable encounter sites globally, supporting both research and ecotourism programmes.

The mangrove cover in the basin is limited in absolute area (approximately 270 km² across the seven Parties, much smaller than the Eastern African basin at similar latitude on the global scale) but ecologically important as nursery habitat and as carbon sinks. The Avicennia marina is the dominant species; the Rhizophora mucronata is locally significant in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The mangrove conservation work is integrated with the Biodiversity Protocol implementation.

Oil + gas activities: Saudi Aramco, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen

Offshore oil and gas activity in the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden basin is considerably less than in the Persian Gulf, but is material and growing. The principal active areas are:

• The Gulf of Suez off the Egyptian coast, the longest-established offshore oil province in the basin, with several dozen producing platforms operated by joint ventures of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), Apache, Eni and BP. Daily production is around 300,000 barrels per day and falling.
• The Saudi Red Sea off the Saudi Arabian coast, where Saudi Aramco has been undertaking exploration since the 2010s with the discovery of significant gas resources. Production has not commenced at scale as of 2026.
• The Sudanese Red Sea offshore, with limited exploration activity and no commercial production to date.
• The Yemeni coast, particularly the Marib-area onshore oil that connects via pipeline to the Ras Isa terminal on the Red Sea coast and to the Mukalla terminal on the Gulf of Aden coast. The Yemeni Civil War has severely disrupted both the production and the export infrastructure.
• The Egyptian Mediterranean and West Mediterranean Basin outside the Convention area, including the giant Zohr gas field discovered in 2015, which is not within the Jeddah Convention scope but does affect the regional regulatory thinking through the Egyptian dual MEDPOL/PERSGA participation.

The offshore activity is governed by national regulatory regimes with PERSGA technical guidelines on operational discharges, drilling-fluids management, produced-water management and decommissioning. There is no separate Continental Shelf Protocol (in contrast to the ROPME Continental Shelf Protocol of 1989); the offshore regulatory regime sits under the parent Convention and the Land-Based Activities Protocol coverage of “fixed installations on the seabed”.

Tanker + container traffic: ~50,000 vessels Bab-el-Mandeb

The shipping traffic through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden is dominated by transit traffic on the Indian Ocean-Mediterranean corridor, with a smaller component of intra-regional and port-call traffic. The annual transit volume through the Bab-el-Mandeb in the pre-2023 period averaged approximately 50,000 vessels per year, of which approximately 20,000 were Suez Canal transits in either direction.

The traffic mix is approximately 35 percent dry-bulk and general cargo, 25 percent container ships, 20 percent oil and product tankers, 10 percent LNG carriers (a rapidly growing segment), 5 percent vehicle and roll-on/roll-off carriers, and 5 percent other (passenger ships, naval vessels, fishing vessels, offshore-support craft). The largest classes of vessels in routine service include the Maersk-Triple-E and MSC-Megamax container ships (more than 24,000 TEU), the Q-Max LNG carriers (266,000 m³), the Suezmax tankers (around 1 million barrels) and the largest dry-bulk carriers (Capesize and VLOC).

The traffic density in the southern Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandeb approaches is among the highest globally, with average vessel-counts of 100 to 150 vessels in the Bab-el-Mandeb TSS at any given moment in the pre-2023 period. The traffic concentration produces both routine operational pollution (bilge, sewage, ballast, garbage) and elevated collision-and-grounding risk, neither of which is matched by a corresponding routeing-and-reporting infrastructure: there is no PSSA, no compulsory pilotage, no mandatory ship reporting and no SAR-coordinated routeing system in the Convention area as of 2026 (treated more fully below).

Houthi attacks 2023-2024: shipping disruption

The Houthi (Ansar Allah) movement controlling much of north-western Yemen escalated attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandeb from November 2023 following the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Attack methods included anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), small-boat boardings and hijackings. The attacks targeted ships with declared or perceived Israeli or Western connections initially, expanding through 2024 to a broader range of commercial vessels.

The disruption produced the most significant shift in global shipping route patterns since the 1956 Suez Crisis. Container-ship operators including Maersk, MSC, Hapag-Lloyd, CMA CGM, Evergreen and ONE rerouted the majority of their Asia-Europe services around the Cape of Good Hope from December 2023, adding approximately 3,000 to 3,500 nautical miles and 7 to 14 days to the round-trip transit, increasing fuel consumption per voyage by roughly 25 to 30 percent and pushing freight rates on the Asia-Europe trade up by a multiple of 2 to 4 from late 2023 through 2024. The Suez Canal Authority lost approximately 50 to 60 percent of its transit revenue in 2024 relative to 2022.

The attacks have driven the most significant pollution-and-risk concerns under the Convention regime in decades. Several attacked vessels resulted in major oil-pollution incidents: the Rubymar (a Belize-flagged bulk carrier carrying ammonium phosphate sulphate fertiliser, sunk in March 2024 with the release of approximately 21,000 tonnes of fertiliser into the southern Red Sea); the Marlin Luanda (an oil-products tanker hit by a missile in January 2024 with significant fire damage); the Sounion (a Greek-flagged crude tanker hit and abandoned with a salvage operation in August-September 2024); and several other incidents with smaller pollution consequences. The PERSGA emergency response system has been activated repeatedly, with cooperation between the Saudi, Yemeni, Djiboutian and Egyptian authorities under the regional contingency plan.

The geopolitical and operational situation as of mid-2026 remains fluid; the corridor has not fully reopened to normal traffic, and the long-term implications for the Convention regime, for the Suez Canal Authority’s revenue base, and for the IMO routeing-and-protection architecture are still being assessed. The PERSGA Council has issued formal communications to the IMO and to the UN Security Council on the situation, but has been constrained by the divided position of the Yemeni Party (the internationally-recognised government in Aden does not control the Houthi-administered Red Sea coast) and by the broader regional politics.

Coastal city pollution: Jeddah, Aqaba, Massawa, Hodeida, Aden

The major coastal cities along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden generate substantial municipal and industrial pollution loads, which are the principal subject of the Land-Based Activities Protocol. The five principal cities and their approximate populations and pollution profiles are:

• Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (population approximately 4.7 million, the largest urban centre on the Red Sea). Jeddah hosts the King Abdulaziz Port (Saudi Arabia’s principal Red Sea port and one of the busiest in the basin), substantial petrochemical industry, several large desalination plants and a growing municipal sewage load. The Jeddah corniche has been the subject of significant cleanup investment since 2010.
• Aqaba, Jordan (population approximately 200,000, but with a much larger industrial and tourist throughput). Aqaba hosts Jordan’s only seaport, the Aqaba Container Terminal, the King Hussein International Airport, the Aqaba Special Economic Zone, and substantial fertiliser and potash export infrastructure. The Aqaba Marine Reserve was expanded in 2017 to cover a larger area of the Jordanian coastal waters.
• Massawa, Eritrea (population approximately 50,000). Massawa is Eritrea’s principal port and was historically the major commercial centre of the Italian colonial period. The port’s regulatory framework is outside the Jeddah Convention as Eritrea is not a Party.
• Hodeida, Yemen (population approximately 700,000). Hodeida is Yemen’s principal Red Sea port and the entry point for most of the country’s food, fuel and humanitarian cargo. The port has been a focal point of the Yemeni Civil War since 2015, with the 2018 UN-brokered Stockholm Agreement maintaining a fragile cessation of hostilities around the port. Hodeida sits adjacent to the FSO Safer mooring (treated separately below).
• Aden, Yemen (population approximately 900,000). Aden is the principal Gulf of Aden port, the seat of the internationally-recognised Yemeni government and the historical British colonial capital. The Aden port has been substantially rehabilitated since 2015 and is the principal LNG import terminal for southern Yemen.

The pollution loads from these cities are dominated by municipal sewage (much of which is undertreated or untreated, particularly in the smaller centres), industrial effluents from petrochemical, fertiliser and desalination operations, and increasingly mismanaged plastic waste. The PERSGA SOMER 2022 assessment identifies sewage and plastic as the two highest-priority land-based pollution issues across the basin.

MARPOL Annex I + V Special Area status (since 1973)

The Red Sea has been a MARPOL Annex I Special Area since the original 1973 MARPOL Convention text and a MARPOL Annex V Special Area since the 1988 Annex V Special Area amendments, with the discharge restrictions becoming effective on the construction of adequate reception facilities at the principal Red Sea ports. Special Area status is a globally-significant regulatory designation under MARPOL, restricting operational discharges from ships beyond the standard Annex I and Annex V requirements. The principal restrictions are:

• Annex I: prohibition on discharge of oil and oily mixtures from cargo and machinery spaces above the standard 15 ppm limit, with no exception for the cargo-tank-washings that are otherwise allowed under the standard 30 L/nm Reg 15 criteria. The Special Area regime applies throughout the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba; the Gulf of Aden is not part of the Annex I Special Area.
• Annex V: prohibition on discharge of garbage and plastics, with the only permitted discharges being food waste at sufficient distance from shore and ground food waste at lesser distance from shore (under the post-2013 revised Annex V regime). The Special Area regime applies throughout the Red Sea; the Gulf of Aden is not part of the Annex V Special Area.

The Special Area designations are operationally enforceable through Port State Control inspections and through coastal-state monitoring. The principal compliance challenges are the variable adequacy of reception facilities at the regional ports (with several smaller ports having historically inadequate sludge and garbage reception capacity), the Yemeni Civil War disruption to the Hodeida and Aden facilities, and the chronic operational discharges from the heavy regional traffic. The PERSGA-Lloyds Register joint reception-facility assessment programme runs every five years; the 2022 assessment found Saudi Arabian, Egyptian and Jordanian facilities adequate, Sudanese and Djiboutian facilities marginal, and Yemeni facilities largely non-functional.

The Gulf of Aden is conspicuously not included in the MARPOL Annex I or Annex V Special Areas. The reasons are partly historical (the Gulf of Aden was less heavily-trafficked at the time of the 1973 designation) and partly operational (the Gulf of Aden has lower coral-reef coverage and the impact threshold for Annex I-V regulation is harder to meet than for the Red Sea proper). The PERSGA Council has adopted resolutions calling for an extension of the Special Area to include the Gulf of Aden, but no IMO submission has been formally made as of 2026.

Absence of MARPOL Annex VI Special Area / NECA (notable gap)

A more significant regulatory gap is the absence of any MARPOL Annex VI air-emissions Special Area or Emission Control Area (ECA) in the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden region. Annex VI Special Areas exist for sulphur and nitrogen oxide emissions in the Baltic, the North Sea, the North American coast, the US Caribbean, the Mediterranean (sulphur ECA from 1 May 2025), and the Norwegian Sea (under designation), but not for any part of the Convention area. Given that the corridor carries approximately 12 percent of global trade and is one of the most heavily-trafficked maritime arteries, the absence of an Annex VI Special Area or ECA is a notable regulatory anomaly.

The reasons for the gap are partly the political sensitivity of the Saudi position (Saudi Aramco being one of the world’s largest producers of high-sulphur bunker fuel, and the Saudi flag-state interest in not pushing for tighter ECA regulation), partly the regional disagreement on the appropriate timing (Egypt has historically been more open to ECA designation, particularly given the Mediterranean SECA designation that came into force in May 2025), and partly the operational complexity of designating a Special Area covering a transit corridor with limited regional ports for compliant fuel supply. The PERSGA Council has discussed an Annex VI Special Area at intervals since 2018; no consensus has been reached, and the matter is treated as on-hold pending the IMO’s broader development of the regional ECA framework and the regional fuel-supply chain readiness.

The absence of an ECA-NECA designation means that ships transiting the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden corridor operate under the global 0.50 percent m/m sulphur cap (the IMO 2020 sulphur cap) rather than the tighter 0.10 percent m/m ECA limit applicable in the SECA areas. The implications for regional air quality, particularly along the heavily-populated Saudi, Yemeni and Egyptian coasts, are an active subject of regional research, and several recent UN Climate publications have argued for accelerated ECA designation as a regional climate-and-health intervention.

FSO Safer (Yemen) crisis 2018-2023 + UN salvage 2023

The FSO Safer was a single-hull VLCC-class floating storage and offloading vessel moored approximately 4.8 nautical miles off the Yemeni Ras Isa terminal, north of Hodeida, in the southern Red Sea. The vessel had been in service as the Yemeni state oil-export terminal since 1988, holding approximately 1.14 million barrels (roughly 150,000 tonnes) of crude oil. The Yemeni Civil War from 2014-2015 onwards produced a complete cessation of routine maintenance, deterioration of the vessel’s structural integrity, loss of inert-gas system function and progressive corrosion of the cargo tanks. By 2018 the vessel was widely assessed as one of the most acute oil-spill risks globally; by 2022 internal UN assessments had it as a near-imminent catastrophe.

The estimated impact of a complete release of the Safer’s cargo would have been four times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident, with consequences including: catastrophic damage to the southern Red Sea coral-reef province, including Saudi Arabian, Yemeni and Eritrean reefs; severe disruption of the Hodeida port operations and the humanitarian aid corridor; major fishery and food-security impacts on the Yemeni and African Red Sea coastal populations; and significant medium-term contamination of the Saudi-Sudanese-Eritrean coastlines under the prevailing winds and currents.

The UN-led salvage operation was coordinated through the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) with UNDP as the implementing partner, financed through a US$148 million budget contributed by member states (the Saudi Arabia and US contributions being the largest), with technical implementation by the Boskalis-SMIT salvage consortium and the Belgian-flagged replacement VLCC Yemen. The first phase of the operation (the ship-to-ship transfer of the cargo to the replacement vessel) was completed in August 2023. The second phase (the towing of the decommissioned Safer hulk to a scrapyard in Gulf-area facilities) was completed in mid-2024.

The Safer salvage is widely regarded as the most successful international cooperation outcome in the Yemeni Civil War period and as a model for managing legacy oil-storage risks in conflict-affected coastal areas. The PERSGA technical secretariat played a coordinating role through the regional contingency plan; the operation was outside the formal Convention regime in that it was UN-led rather than PERSGA-led, but the regional emergency-response architecture provided the legal and operational framework for the participating Parties’ cooperation.

2024 IMO Bab-el-Mandeb routeing measures (deferred)

In early 2024, in the immediate aftermath of the Houthi shipping attacks, several PERSGA Parties (notably Saudi Arabia and Egypt) and several flag states with significant Red Sea-corridor traffic (including the Marshall Islands, Liberia, Greece and the United Kingdom) developed proposals for strengthened IMO routeing measures in the Bab-el-Mandeb and the southern Red Sea. The proposals included:

• Designation of the southern Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandeb as a PSSA, with associated Associated Protective Measures (APMs) including possible mandatory ship reporting, mandatory routeing schemes and specific traffic-separation enhancements.
• Introduction of an expanded Voluntary Reporting System through the regional military-naval architecture (the EU-NAVFOR Operation Aspides launched in February 2024, the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian launched in December 2023 and the regional Combined Maritime Forces Task Force).
• Establishment of a regional Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) for the strait and the southern Red Sea, with cooperation between the Djiboutian, Saudi, Yemeni (internationally-recognised government) and Eritrean (despite Eritrea not being a Party) authorities.

The IMO submissions were deferred at the MEPC 81 (March 2024) and MEPC 82 (October 2024) meetings on the basis that the security situation made it impossible to assess the operational feasibility of the proposals and that the Houthi-controlled coastal authority could not be brought into the routeing framework. The matter was re-tabled at MEPC 83 (April 2025) with similar outcomes. As of mid-2026 the formal IMO routeing measures for the Bab-el-Mandeb and the southern Red Sea remain at the proposal stage.

The deferral is a significant regulatory failure of the regional regime, in that the corridor’s vulnerabilities (demonstrated by the Houthi attacks) and its global-trade significance (12 percent of seaborne trade) would normally have produced an accelerated regulatory response. The lesson for the Convention regime has been the criticality of regional political consensus as a precondition for regulatory action, which is in turn a function of the broader Yemeni political settlement.

2015 New Suez Canal expansion

The New Suez Canal project, opened on 6 August 2015 by the Suez Canal Authority under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, added approximately 35 km of new parallel channel to the existing single-lane sections of the original Canal. The project doubled the throughput capacity for two-way traffic, reduced the average transit time from approximately 18 hours to approximately 11 hours, and was financed through a US$8.5 billion sovereign-backed bond issuance to the Egyptian public.

The capacity expansion has driven a parallel acceleration of the Lessepsian migration as discussed above, since the operational salinity of the Bitter Lakes barrier has dropped further with the increased throughflow, enabling additional Red Sea species to establish in the eastern Mediterranean. The expansion has also enabled the largest classes of ULCC, ULCC-LNG, and Megamax container vessels to transit the Canal on a routine basis, and has been followed by the 2025-2026 SCA expansion phase 2 project to deepen the southern entrance to handle the largest Q-Max LNG carriers and to expand the bypass capacity in the central section.

The PERSGA-Suez Canal Authority cooperation framework has been formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2018 and updated in 2024, covering the joint emergency-response coordination at the Canal-Red Sea interface, the joint monitoring of Lessepsian invasive species, and the joint ballast-water management framework. The MoU does not bring the Suez Canal itself within the Convention area (which would require a Convention amendment), but it provides the operational link between the SCA and the regional regime.

Suez Canal Authority (SCA) coordination

The Suez Canal Authority is an Egyptian state authority constituted under the 1957 nationalisation legislation, with operational autonomy under the President of Egypt. The SCA is responsible for the operation, maintenance and economic management of the Suez Canal, including the transit fees, the pilotage, the tug services, the construction of the Canal infrastructure and the management of the bypass channels.

The SCA maintains its own oil-spill response architecture for incidents within the Canal itself, with an operational base at the Ismailia headquarters and equipment stockpiles distributed along the Canal. The cooperation with PERSGA covers the Canal-Red Sea interface (the Gulf of Suez-Suez approach), the Canal-Mediterranean interface (under the Barcelona Convention’s REMPEC Marseille framework), and the joint training and exercise programmes. The SCA also participates in the regional Lessepsian invasive-species monitoring through annual surveys at the Bitter Lakes and the Great Bitter Lake, with the data feeding into the PERSGA regional database.

The 2021 grounding of the Ever Given container ship in the Canal (which blocked the Canal for six days from 23-29 March 2021 and disrupted approximately US$9 billion per day of global trade) tested the SCA-PERSGA cooperation framework in an unusual scenario. The grounding was within the Canal proper rather than in the Convention area, but the scale of the disruption and the immediate threat of pollution from the bunker fuel and from the cargo (the Ever Given was carrying around 18,300 TEU on the Asia-Europe service) drew on the regional response architecture. The grounding was resolved without significant pollution incident, but the lessons-learned exercise produced significant recommendations for the joint contingency planning.

African Union AIM 2050 + Arab League alignment

The Jeddah Convention regime sits at the intersection of the African Union (with three African Parties: Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan and the Egyptian dual-membership of AU and Arab League) and the Arab League (with five Arab Parties: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, plus Djibouti and Somalia as observers). The dual-architecture has produced a complex but pragmatic alignment with both regional blocs.

The African Union 2050 Africa’s Integrated Maritime Strategy (AIM 2050), adopted at AU Assembly Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.496(XXII) on 27 January 2014, articulates the African continent’s long-term maritime vision including security, the blue economy, environmental sustainability, fisheries, ports and shipping, and capacity-building. AIM 2050 explicitly references the Jeddah Convention and PERSGA as the relevant regional institutional framework for the African Red Sea-Gulf of Aden coast. The AU follow-up Lomé Charter (the AU Charter on Maritime Security and Safety and Development in Africa, adopted 15 October 2016) carries forward the AIM 2050 framework with additional security-and-development emphasis.

The Arab League has historically operated through the Council of Arab Ministers Responsible for the Environment (CAMRE) and through the Arab Centre for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands (ACSAD), with cooperation with PERSGA on the marine and coastal environment. The cooperation has been formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 1998 and updated in 2018, covering joint environmental priorities, joint participation in international environmental fora, and the Arab regional inputs to the Convention work programme.

The dual-AU-Arab-League architecture is one of the regional regime’s distinctive strengths and has produced several useful synergies, including the AU-Arab League joint statement on Red Sea security and the joint inputs to the UN Plastics Treaty negotiations. It has also produced occasional friction, particularly when the AU and Arab League have taken different positions on the Yemeni Civil War or on the broader regional politics. PERSGA has consistently positioned itself as a non-political technical secretariat, an approach that has been broadly successful in maintaining the Convention regime through periods of severe regional instability.

PERSGA Action Plan 2017-2022 + 2023-2027 cycle

The PERSGA Action Plan is the periodic operational programme of the Convention regime, adopted by the Council on a five-year cycle and implemented by the Secretariat with supporting financing from the Parties, the GEF, UNEP and other partners. The two most recent cycles have been:

• The PERSGA Action Plan 2017-2022, adopted at the Council Ordinary Meeting in 2016. The Plan focused on the implementation of the Biodiversity Protocol (which had entered into force in 2015), the implementation of the Land-Based Activities Protocol (which entered into force in 2017), the regional MPA Network expansion, the regional plastic-pollution programme initiation, the regional ICZM framework strengthening, and the climate-adaptation programme launch.
• The PERSGA Action Plan 2023-2027, adopted at the Council Ordinary Meeting in 2022 and updated through annual work-programme reviews. The Plan focuses on the post-Houthi-disruption recovery, the FSO Safer post-salvage monitoring (which continues through 2027), the MPA Network expansion towards the 30x30 GBF target, the regional plastics negotiations under the UN Plastics Treaty, the climate-adaptation funding through the Adaptation Fund and the Green Climate Fund, the SDG-14 implementation reporting, and the deferred IMO routeing-measures advocacy.

The Action Plan budget runs at approximately US$15 to 25 million per cycle, with the 2023-2027 cycle being at the upper end of the historical range due to the post-Houthi recovery and FSO Safer monitoring components. The financing mix is approximately 60 percent assessed contributions from the Parties, 20 percent project financing through GEF and UNEP, 10 percent bilateral donors (notably the EU, the German GIZ, the Norwegian NORAD, the Saudi Fund for Development) and 10 percent private-sector partnerships (notably with Saudi Aramco for the Red Sea-coast environmental monitoring and with the major shipping lines for the post-2024 corridor recovery work).

Comparison to Nairobi Convention 1985 (parallel WIO)

The Nairobi Convention 1985 is the parallel UNEP Regional Seas instrument for the Western Indian Ocean (WIO), covering the Eastern African coast from Somalia to Mozambique plus the WIO island states (Comoros, France for Réunion and Mayotte, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania). The Nairobi Convention covers approximately 12,000 km of mainland coast plus the WIO islands and an EEZ envelope of around 8 million km², considerably larger than the Jeddah Convention area. The administrative interface between the two regimes is the Cape Guardafui-Socotra line.

The two regimes share several structural features (framework Convention plus thematic Protocols, UNEP Regional Seas alignment, MPA-network architecture under the Biodiversity Protocols, Land-Based Activities Protocols), but differ in several important respects. The Nairobi Convention is administered by UNEP directly through the Nairobi-based secretariat, in contrast to PERSGA’s standalone-organisation architecture. The Nairobi Convention area has no MARPOL Annex I or V Special Areas (in contrast to the Red Sea proper); and the Nairobi Convention area carries far less shipping traffic. The two regimes cooperate through the UNEP Regional Seas annual programme of work and through the joint African Union AIM 2050 framework.

Comparison to Abidjan Convention 1981 (parallel African Atlantic)

The Abidjan Convention 1981 is the parallel Regional Seas instrument for the Atlantic coast of West and Central Africa, covering 22 mainland coastal states from Mauritania to Angola plus the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe and Cape Verde. The Abidjan Convention area is approximately 14,000 km of coastline and an EEZ envelope of more than 5 million km², covering a much wider and longer coast than the Jeddah Convention area but with a comparable number of Parties. The administrative interface between the Abidjan and Jeddah regimes does not exist directly (the two regimes do not share a maritime boundary), but the Abidjan-Nairobi-Jeddah triangle of African regional regimes is coordinated through the AU-AIM 2050 framework.

The Abidjan Convention has a similar historical-political profile to the Jeddah Convention (both adopted in the early 1980s wave of Regional Seas instruments), and a comparable Protocol structure (Land-Based Sources, Emergency Response, with additional offshore and protected-areas Protocols pending in the Abidjan case as of 2026). The Abidjan area has significant offshore oil and gas activity comparable to the Red Sea but with a much larger continental-shelf petroleum province. The Abidjan area carries much less transit shipping than the Jeddah area, but more port-call traffic to the West African economic centres (Dakar, Abidjan, Lagos, Luanda).

Comparison to Kuwait Convention 1978 (parallel ROPME)

The Kuwait Convention 1978 is the parallel Regional Seas instrument for the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman to Ra’s al Hadd, covering eight Contracting Parties (Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE) and an area of approximately 240,000 km². ROPME and PERSGA are the two Arabian-Peninsula regional regimes and have a substantial overlap of Parties (Saudi Arabia is the only Party to both, but several PERSGA Parties have observer or cooperation status at ROPME, and vice versa).

The Kuwait Convention has a more developed Protocol structure (four Protocols in force: Emergency, Continental Shelf, Land-Based Sources, Hazardous Wastes) compared to the Jeddah Convention (three Protocols in force). The ROPME Sea Area has the dedicated Marine Emergency Mutual Aid Centre (MEMAC) in Manama, Bahrain as the operational arm of the Emergency Protocol, in contrast to the PERSGA virtual-centre architecture. Both regimes have MARPOL Annex I and Annex V Special Area status, but neither has Annex VI ECA designation. The two regimes cooperate informally through the Saudi dual-membership and through joint Arab League and UNEP fora; there is no formal cooperation agreement between ROPME and PERSGA as of 2026.

2030 outlook: routeing, climate, plastic

The Jeddah Convention regime faces several major regulatory challenges in the 2030 horizon:

• Routeing measures: the deferred IMO routeing-and-protection measures for the Bab-el-Mandeb and the southern Red Sea remain the most acute outstanding regulatory issue. The resolution depends primarily on the broader Yemeni political settlement and on the IMO MEPC and MSC processes; the Convention regime can support but not drive the resolution.
• Climate adaptation and mitigation: the basin’s thermal-tolerance refugia value, combined with the broader climate stress on the global ocean and the IMO emissions-reduction targets, makes the Convention area one of the highest-priority climate-adaptation work programmes globally. The 2030 outlook includes the implementation of the IMO 2050 net-zero shipping target, the regional contributions to the global climate negotiations, and the regional adaptation programmes for the coastal communities.
• Plastic pollution: the regional plastic-pollution programme is at an early operational stage; its direction will be shaped in large part by the outcome of the UN Plastics Treaty negotiations under UNEP. The regional Action Plan 2023-2027 includes substantial plastic-related work, with the principal focus on the regional implementation framework once the global instrument is adopted.
• Eritrean accession: the longstanding outstanding membership question remains a regulatory gap. The PERSGA Council has adopted a fresh outreach approach in 2024 with cooperation through the AU AIM 2050 framework; the prospects depend on broader regional politics.
• MARPOL Annex VI ECA designation: the air-emissions regulatory gap is one of the most acute single-regulation gaps in the Convention regime. The PERSGA technical secretariat is preparing the analytical groundwork for a possible ECA submission to the IMO in the 2027-2030 window, contingent on regional political consensus.

The 30x30 GBF biodiversity targets (30 percent MPA coverage of EEZ by 2030), the BBNJ Treaty (the 2023 UN Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, signed by most Parties as of 2026, although the BBNJ does not directly apply within national jurisdiction), and the integration of the climate-adaptation funding through the Adaptation Fund and the Green Climate Fund into the Convention work programme are the three principal cross-cutting priorities of the 2030 outlook.

Scope boundaries and regulatory gaps

The Convention does not apply to warships and government vessels in non-commercial service, although the Convention text commits Parties to ensure that such vessels act consistently with the Convention so far as is reasonable and practicable. The Convention does not apply to the Suez Canal itself (which is governed separately by the Constantinople Convention 1888 and by Egyptian sovereignty), nor to the Mediterranean, nor to the Indian Ocean east of the Cape Guardafui-Socotra line.

The Convention area boundaries between the Bab-el-Mandeb and the Cape Guardafui-Socotra line are not perfectly defined in the operational mapping, with the eastern Gulf of Aden boundary in particular being administratively imprecise. The cooperation with the Nairobi Convention 1985 (which administers the eastern boundary as the western limit of its area) is the operational mechanism for managing this imprecision; in practice no significant regulatory issue has arisen from the imprecise boundary as of 2026.

The Convention does not extend to the Eritrean coast as a Party-jurisdictional matter (Eritrea being a non-Party), although the geography of the basin is such that the Eritrean waters are within the Convention area as a hydrographic matter. The cooperation with Eritrea on practical environmental matters operates through informal technical exchanges; no formal regulatory mechanism applies.

The Convention does not have a Continental Shelf Protocol analogous to the Kuwait Convention 1989 Protocol; the offshore oil and gas regulatory regime operates under national legislation with PERSGA technical guidelines. The Convention does not have a Hazardous Wastes Protocol analogous to the Kuwait Convention 1998 Protocol; transboundary hazardous-waste movements are governed by the global Basel Convention 1989 and by national legislation. The Convention does not contain quantitative emission-reduction targets analogous to OSPAR PARCOM Recommendations or HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan; the regional approach is BAT/BEP under nationally-determined implementation.

The Yemeni Civil War since 2014-2015 has substantially impaired the operational reach of the Convention regime in Yemeni waters. The internationally-recognised government in Aden controls the southern and eastern coast (Aden, Mukalla, Socotra) but not the Houthi-administered northern coast (Hodeida, Mocha, Salif, the FSO Safer area). The PERSGA Council has worked with both administrative authorities through pragmatic technical-level cooperation, but the formal Convention regime applies only through the internationally-recognised government. The 2018-2023 FSO Safer salvage operation was managed primarily through the UN architecture rather than through the Convention regime, and is not a precedent for routine Convention operation.

Regulatory basis

The Convention text is the Regional Convention for the Conservation of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Environment, Jeddah, 14 February 1982 (entered into force 20 August 1985). The Emergency Protocol is the Protocol Concerning Regional Cooperation in Combating Pollution by Oil and Other Harmful Substances in Cases of Emergency, Jeddah, 14 February 1982 (in force 20 August 1985). The Biodiversity Protocol is the Protocol Concerning the Conservation of Biological Diversity and the Establishment of Network of Protected Areas in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, Jeddah 2005 (in force 2015). The Land-Based Activities Protocol is the Protocol Concerning the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities, Jeddah 2005 (in force 2017).

The Convention is administered by PERSGA from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in partnership with the UNEP Regional Seas Programme. The Convention work programme is adopted at the Council of Plenipotentiaries. The AU AIM 2050 framework is at AU Assembly Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.496(XXII), 27 January 2014. The Lomé Charter is the AU Charter on Maritime Security and Safety and Development in Africa, Lomé, 15 October 2016. UNCLOS Part XII (Articles 192 to 237) provides the umbrella obligations.

The MARPOL Special Area designations for the Red Sea derive from the MARPOL Convention 1973/78 Annex I and Annex V regimes as amended; the Annex I Special Area has been in force from the Convention’s entry into force in 1983, and the Annex V Special Area from the entry into force of the Annex V Special Area amendments in the late 1980s. The IMO list of MARPOL Special Areas (as published on the IMO website and updated periodically) is the authoritative reference. The Suez Canal Authority operates under the 1957 Egyptian nationalisation legislation and the 1888 Constantinople Convention as historical legal anchors.

Common errors

A frequent confusion is to assume that PERSGA is a UNEP body; it is not, PERSGA is an independent regional intergovernmental organisation hosted by Saudi Arabia, in partnership with UNEP through the Regional Seas Programme. A second confusion is to count Eritrea as a Party; Eritrea has the longest Red Sea coastline but is not a Party to the Convention as of 2026.

A third confusion is to assume the Convention area includes the Suez Canal; it does not, the Canal is governed separately by the Constantinople Convention 1888 and by Egyptian sovereignty, and the Convention area’s northern boundary is at the Suez Canal southern entrance. A fourth confusion is to assume the Convention area extends into the northern Indian Ocean or into the Arabian Sea; it does not, the eastern boundary is at the Cape Guardafui-Socotra line.

A fifth confusion is to assume the Convention has Annex VI ECA / Annex VI Special Area designation; it does not, the basin has Annex I and Annex V Special Area status only, with the Annex VI air-emissions regime operating only under the global 0.50 percent m/m sulphur cap. A sixth confusion is to count the Convention as having only one Protocol in force; three Protocols are in force as of 2026 (Emergency 1982/1985, Biodiversity 2005/2015, LBA 2005/2017).

A seventh confusion is to assume the Convention area has a PSSA designation; it does not, no PSSA has been designated within the Convention area as of 2026, despite the substantial ecological and traffic-density case for such a designation. An eighth confusion is to attribute the 2023 FSO Safer salvage to the PERSGA regime; the salvage was a UN-led operation through OCHA and UNDP, with PERSGA playing a coordinating role through the regional contingency plan but not the lead role.

A ninth confusion is to assume the 2024 IMO Bab-el-Mandeb routeing measures were adopted; they were proposed at MEPC 81 and re-tabled at MEPC 82 and 83, but no formal IMO routeing measures have been adopted for the Bab-el-Mandeb or the southern Red Sea as of mid-2026. A tenth confusion is to attribute the 2015 New Suez Canal expansion to PERSGA; it was an Egyptian Suez Canal Authority project, with no direct PERSGA role, although the post-expansion Lessepsian-migration consequences are a PERSGA cooperation issue.

Limitations

The Jeddah Convention 1982 is a framework instrument with no quantitative discharge targets and no emission-reduction obligations analogous to OSPAR PARCOM or HELCOM. Its enforceability depends entirely on national implementation and coastal-state port-state-control capacity, which varies widely across the seven Parties. The regime’s operational reach in Yemeni waters has been substantially impaired by the civil war since 2014-2015 and cannot be treated as functioning normally. Eritrea’s non-membership leaves a 2,234 km regulatory gap on the western shore of the southern Red Sea that is covered only through informal cooperation.

The MARPOL Annex I and Annex V Special Area designations for the Red Sea are the instrument’s strongest legally-binding discharge controls, but they derive from the global MARPOL regime, not from the Convention itself. The Convention area has no PSSA, no compulsory pilotage, no Annex VI ECA and no mandatory ship-reporting system as of 2026. The Convention’s emergency response system operates as a virtual centre rather than a dedicated facility, and its practical effectiveness depends on the response capacity and political willingness of the coastal states at the time of an incident.

The three Protocols in force cover biodiversity, land-based activities and emergency response. No protocols have been adopted on continental-shelf operations, hazardous-waste transboundary movement, marine litter as a standalone instrument, or climate adaptation as a legally binding obligation. The regime’s updating mechanism (the five-year Action Plan cycle) is non-binding; the Convention text has not been amended since 1982. Users should treat the Jeddah Convention regime as a baseline cooperation framework requiring parallel compliance with IMO instruments (MARPOL, SOLAS, BWM, STCW), national law and flag-state requirements for any specific operational obligation.

See also

• MARPOL Convention
• MARPOL Annex I oil pollution prevention
• Abidjan Convention 1981
• Nairobi Convention 1985
• Helsinki Convention 1992
• Bucharest Convention 1992
• Barcelona Convention 1976/1995
• OSPAR Convention 1992
• Cartagena Convention 1983
• Kuwait Convention 1978 (ROPME)
• PSSA overview
• Ballast Water Management Convention
• MARPOL Annex I Reg 15 oil discharge criteria
• IMO 2020 sulphur cap
• Suez Canal
• Marine and environmental calculators

Related calculators

• Jeddah (SA) - Port Card
• HNS Convention 2010 - Hazardous Cargo Liability
• Bunker Convention 2001 - Liability Scope
• BWM Convention - Discharge Locations
• Sea Water Cooling Pump Capacity
• GMDSS - Sea Area Coverage Check
• SOLAS IV/9 - Sea area A2
• SOLAS IV/8 - Sea area A1