Public policies relating to biodiversity and environmental issues are framed by international guidelines:

• The Directive Habitat Faune Flore (DHFF) ratified by France in 1994. It resulted in the creation of a network of protected marine areas covering 10% of French territorial waters.
• The Water Framework Directive (WFD) ratified in 2000.
• The Data Collection Framewok Directive (DCF) of 2001, which allows for the monitoring of the Common Fisheries Policy and the assessment of the status of fish stocks.
• The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) of 2008, which allows for the analysis of the impacts of human activity on the diversity and functioning of marine ecosystems.

In response to these directives, the Sorbonne University Alliance has made significant efforts in the following fields :

• Research in conservation ecology, by developing indicators of the state of ecosystems, by modeling the responses of ecosystems to environmental pressures in the context of global change
• The development of observation and monitoring systems for marine ecosystems.
• The creation of databases and information systems on the quality of marine ecosystems.

The private sector generally seeks to evaluate the impact of its activity on the marine environment: fishing, shellfish farming, extraction of aggregates, marine renewable energies, fossil energies, seawater desalination, port construction, setting up of mooring areas, dredging, clapping, etc.

Finally, forensic expertise consists in characterizing the origin of a pollution, determining the nature and origin of minerals, animals or protected plants.