A recent study has found that global marine conservation is significantly underfunded. Instead of an annual 15.8 billion US dollars needed to protect and conserve 30 percent of the world’s oceans, the international community only spends 1.2 billion dollars – less than ten percent. This is the result of a study commissioned by several NGOs and institutions such as WWF, Bloomberg Ocean Fund and Marine Conservation Institute, which will be published this Thursday, five days before the start of the UN Ocean Conference in Nice.