After more than a decade of negotiations and over 38 hours of talks in the last meeting, on Saturday 4 the nations in the UN headquarters in New York have finally reached an agreement about the famous “High Seas Treaty”.
The world’s oceans are under threat from overfishing, pollution, climate change, and other human activities. The oceans beyond national jurisdiction, also known as the “high seas” cover almost 2/3 of the Earth’s surface and play a vital role in regulating the planet’s climate and supporting life. However, these areas are currently governed by a patchwork of laws and regulations that do not adequately protect them from exploitation and harm.
In this context, the High Seas Treaty, which negotiations have started around 2004, aims to address this gap and establish a legal framework to protect the high seas.
In fact, it recognizes these oceans as a shared heritage of humankind that should be managed in a way that benefits all people and species, present and future. Therefore, its aims are the creation of a legal framework seeking to govern activities on the high seas – such as fishing, shipping, mining, and bioprospecting – and to protect marine biodiversity by conserving the ecosystems and promoting scientific research.
Since the first negotiations, it was conceived in order to establish mechanisms for the creation of marine protected areas, set rules for the exploitation of marine resources, and ensure that environmental impact assessments are conducted before any activity is undertaken.
Finally, after almost two decades of negotiations and challenges, such as disagreements over the scope of the Treaty, the allocation of resources, and the threat to the nations’ sovereignty and economic interests, the agreement was finally reached.
It entails that the 1,2% of current protected areas in the high seas, would be transformed into 30% in 2030, trying to limit the risk of extinction of the 10% of all marine and to control all the marine activities done in these international areas.
All the nations shall meet again to discuss the formal adoption and implementation of the High Seas Treaty, but until then the countries have committed to subject “any future activity in the deep seabed to strict environmental regulations and oversight to ensure that they are carried out sustainably and responsibly”, as stated by the International Seabed Authority.
Show Comments