Editor TLN
The High Seas Treaty has been approved, which protects marine areas that are beyond 200 nautical miles from territorial waters. This is a very important step, since seas and oceans absorb 25% of the carbon gases emitted by human activities.
After almost 20 years of negotiations, the member countries of the United Nations approved – in a marathon session that lasted 36 hours until the night of March 4 – the so-called High Seas Treaty, an essential step to protect the oceans in the spaces that They are not under the sovereignty of any State.
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“The ship has come to a safe port,” announced Rena Lee, the Singaporean president of the intergovernmental conference on marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdictions (BBNJ), through tears. Her emotion was not free. The areas of the high seas – that is, those that are beyond 200 nautical miles of territorial waters – represent 230 million square kilometers, more than all the continents combined.
The national delegations of the 193 participating countries, who had not left the negotiating room for nearly two days, received Lee’s words with a long and unanimous ovation. For it to enter into force, 60 countries must ratify the treaty. The EU has donated $42 million and Bloomberg Philanthropies another $80 million to speed up the process.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, attributed the victory to the awareness of the international community of the importance of meeting the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity commitments to protect 30% of the land and sea surface by 2030 (target 30×30). Today only 16% of land areas and 8% of marine areas have some kind of protection.
Survival instinct
According to Laura Meller, a Greenpeace representative at the final stage of negotiations in New York, the treaty is a sign that survival instincts can take over geopolitics. The so-called High Ambition Coalition, a group ad hoc made up of Washington, Brussels, London and Beijing, strove to build bridges with the Global South to achieve consensus on controversial issues, such as the exploitation of natural resources.
No one was unaware of what was at stake. Seas and oceans absorb 25% of the carbon gases emitted by human activities. Marine currents, for their part, redistribute heat, limiting temperature differences between tropical and polar waters by up to 30º. If only the atmosphere –winds, storms– moved the heat, the difference would exceed 110º.
Its economic importance is not minor: fishing, maritime transport, tourism and other economic activities that depend on the sea, move around 2.5 billion dollars a year. The High Seas Treaty has “teeth”, that is, guarantees and mechanisms to ensure compliance and penalize violations.
“Nobody was unaware of what was at stake. Seas and oceans absorb 25% of the carbon gases emitted by human activities.»
Lee has made it clear that no substantive points will be renegotiated. It is not accidental. According to a recent report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, between 20% and 25% of marine species are on the verge of extinction.
The high seas are home to all the links in the food chain, from phytoplankton to blue whales and white sharks, among other species of marine megafauna, increasingly threatened by overfishing, pollution, and high-altitude and long-distance shipping. Since 1970, according to WWF, shark and ray populations have fallen by 70% in the high seas.
As seawater absorbs more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it loses oxygen, warms up, and becomes more acidic. This forces many species to migrate in search of colder waters and prevents mollusks and crustaceans from forming their shells and exoskeletons. Various species that live near the coast spend long periods on the high seas, where they are prey to their worst predator: illegal fishing. Animals, unlike states, do not recognize national borders.
underwater mining
Every year some 11 million metric tons of plastic and unquantifiable volumes of fuel and waste are thrown into the sea on the high seas, where surveillance is minimal. According to Jessica Battle, who led the WWF team, now no one can justify themselves by saying out of sight, out of mind –something like eyes that do not see, heart that does not feel– because the threshold of impunity will be lower.
There is no time to lose. The exploitation of the seabed to extract minerals –cobalt, nickel, copper…– from polymetallic nodules such as those that exist in the Clarion-Clipperton area, between Hawaii and Mexico, is getting closer due to its technological viability and economic profitability.
France, however, proposes to ban it altogether because it could inflict irreparable damage on little-known and hitherto pristine ecosystems. The suction machines that will bring the minerals to the surface will remove tons of sediment that will be scattered for hundreds of kilometers.
The great depths – such as the Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific, up to 11 kilometers deep – are the last great reserve of biodiversity, harboring almost unknown species such as anemones with three-meter tentacles or luminescent sharks.
General interest
The High Seas Treaty recognizes the oceans and their resources as a universal heritage and an integral part of the culture and well-being of those who depend on them, for which reason they must be managed in the general interest of the international community. According to this principle, all extractive activities in them must be subject to some type of control.
According to a commission of 700 experts from 11 countries, the difficulties of supervising and regulating it deprive mining on the seabed of “social legitimacy”, for which reason it calls for a moratorium to be imposed until scientific knowledge and technical means are available to ensure its environmental sustainability.
genetic resources
The UN convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) was signed in 1982 and updated in 1994. The United States is not among its 168 signatories. In 2004, the UN created a group ad hoc to discuss the protection of the oceans outside national jurisdictions. In 2015, he authorized to negotiate a binding treaty.
Negotiations began in earnest in 2018. The biggest obstacles centered around subsidies to fishing fleets, which until now had proven insurmountable. When the treaty enters into force, under certain conditions, marine protected areas may be created in international waters.
States that want to develop industrial projects in them must carry out environmental impact studies under international supervision. No one may appropriate or patent genetic resources from fauna and flora –sponges, corals, algae…– that can be used to produce drugs, cosmetics or other products of commercial value.
Being patrimony of humanity, they will be inappropriate. The treaty also establishes a mechanism for the distribution of benefits that come from the commercialization of specific products, in addition to commitments in technology transfers.
Commitments in Panama
As BBNJ concluded in New York, the second Our Oceans conference began in Panama. Its final declaration included 341 commitments worth $20 billion to improve monitoring and conservation of marine protected areas and biodiversity corridors.
Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo announced the expansion of marine protected areas from 14,000 to 93,000 square kilometers, including four submarine ridges and plains and deep geological formations. The country of the isthmus will thus protect 54.33% of its exclusive economic zone.
Ecuador, for its part, announced that the first eight miles of its continental coastline will be marine reserves in which only artisanal fishing and activities related to tourism, science and education will be allowed. Between 2020 and 2022, its authorities declared 44 unauthorized fishing alerts in the Cantagallo-Machalilla marine reserve.
The treaty authorizes the creation of protected areas on the high seas even if other bodies, such as the International Seabed Authority, have jurisdiction over those areas. Regional fisheries management organizations, which manage certain fisheries resources in different areas of the high seas, will now have to submit to the legal framework of the treaty.
continental shelves
In Latin America, Argentina wants to protect the so-called “Blue Hole” on its continental shelf in Patagonia as soon as possible, an area of exceptional biodiversity and, therefore, subject to intense pressure from Chinese, Korean and European fishing fleets. Chile, in turn, wants to create another protected area in the Nazca submarine mountain range, one of the largest on the planet. Chile already protects the Nazca-Desventuradas and Motu Motiro Hiva marine parks, but the entire middle of the range is in international waters.
