Part II of The Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) is a story of innovation, ambition, and compromise for a framework of information and benefit sharing concerning marine genetic resources of areas beyond national jurisdiction and associated digital sequence information and Traditional Knowledge. Understanding the scope, purpose and proposed implementation of the new treaty requires reflection on the (over) twenty years of preparation leading up to the final treaty text. This introductory chapter for the edited collection ‘Decoding Marine Genetic Resource Governance under the BBNJ Agreement’ analyzes the need for knowledge on marine biodiversity and genetic resources, the jurisdictional context and gaps in ocean governance that the treaty aimed to fill, the preparatory work leading to the negotiations, and the key areas of convergence and divergence during the intergovernmental conference treaty negotiations. It outlines how subsequent chapters in this collection build on this context, by analyzing and interpreting the obligations under the Part II framework and offering practical considerations for its implementation under national law and good scientific practice.