Kristina M. Gjerde, J.D.

Research

Kristina Gjerde was the senior high seas adviser to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. She died in 2025.

Gjerde used her Pew fellowship to investigate, highlight, and promote opportunities to improve high seas governance. Approximately 50% of the Earth’s surface consists of high seas—what lies beyond the 200-nautical-mile limit of national jurisdiction. The high seas, despite their remoteness from land, include some of the marine world’s most exploited and endangered areas. The international legal regime for ocean governance has had few mechanisms to implement or enforce international legal obligations for effective management, conservation, and sustainable use of the high seas.

Partly as a result of her fellowship work, Gjerde became a significant force for high seas governance and conservation. She focused on collaborating with others to build international coalitions to move high seas protection forward. The most prominent collaboration was the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, which puts pressure on the United Nations General Assembly to secure a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling and to protect fragile and unique pockets of life in the deep seas. In addition, Gjerde’s work brought about a major turnaround in attitude on the part of the government of Norway. Formerly a strong critic of efforts to control the high seas, Norway now champions a ban on bottom trawling in coral reef areas and supports protection of at-risk ecosystems in the high seas.

To learn more about Gjerde and her contributions, read her obituary.