This vision incorporates the notion of borderless oceans which require consensual governance as opposed to territorial supremacy to preserve the ocean’s treasured resources for present and future generations.

Earth is a shared planet wherein we as members of the humankind must respect its limited terrestrial and marine resources.

In her attempt to bring the world together within the realm of the oceans, Borgese held annual Pacem in Maribus (Peace in the Oceans) conferences, and jointly discussed and worked on the multifaceted problems of oceans governance and law.

Elisabeth also founded the International Ocean Institute in 1972, a knowledge-based institution, devoted to the sustainable governance of the oceans operating through a large network of national centres scattered all over the world. The mission of the International Ocean Institute is to promote education, training and research to enhance the peaceful uses of ocean space and its resources, their management and regulation as well as the protection and conservation of the marine environment, guided by the principle of the Common Heritage of Mankind.

Elisabeth Mann Borgese was a diligent activist in achieving her principle of the common ownership and sustainable utilization of the resources of the oceans to benefit of humankind as a whole, with particular consideration of the poor. 

"If the oceans are indeed man's last frontier on this old earth of scarcity and competition to which we have reduced our common heritage, the law of the seas is the advance post on the long march toward a new world of science and technology, of abundance and cooperation which we have set out to achieve.”

(Borgese, ‘Tides of Change’)