To the great satisfaction of the associations, the member states agreed on the very first international agreement for the protection of the high seas.
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published on 03/05/2023 at 07:52, updated on 03/05/2023 at 15:21
On Saturday, March 4th, the member states of the UN finally agreed on the first international agreement to protect the high seas, which is intended to counteract the threat to vital ecosystems for mankind.
“The ship has reached shore,” announced conference president Rena Lee on Saturday shortly before 9:30 p.m. at the UN headquarters in New York, to loud and sustained applause from the delegates. After more than 15 years of discussions, including four years of formal negotiations, the third “final” session in New York was finally the right one, or almost.
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“A historic day for conservation”
Delegates finalized the text, the content of which is now essentially frozen, but it will be formally adopted at a later date after it has been reviewed by the legal services and translated to make it available in the six official UN languages. The exact content of the text was not released immediately, but activists hailed it as a turning point for biodiversity protection.
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“It’s a historic day for conservation and a sign that in a divided world, conservation of nature and people can triumph over geopolitics,” said Greenpeace’s Laura Meller. After two weeks of intense discussions, including a marathon session from Friday evening to Saturday, delegates finalized a text that cannot be changed significantly. “There will be no reopening or substantive discussions,” Rena Lee told negotiators on the filing.
“Counteract destructive tendencies”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres congratulated the delegates, according to one of his spokespersons, who said that this agreement is a “victory for multilateralism and for global efforts to combat destructive trends that are affecting ocean health today and for generations to come.” The high seas begins where the states’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) end, a maximum of 200 nautical miles (370 km) from the coasts and is therefore not governed by any state.
Although it makes up more than 60% of the oceans and almost half the planet, it has long been ignored in the fight against the environment, in favor of coastal areas and some emblematic species. As science has advanced, the importance of protecting these oceans, teeming with an often microscopic biodiversity that also provides half the oxygen we breathe, has proven the importance of protecting it and limits global warming by reducing a absorb a large part of the CO2 emitted by human activities. But the oceans are weakening, victims of these emissions (warming, acidification of the water, etc.), pollution of all kinds and overfishing.
marine protected areas
So the new treaty, when it comes into effect after being formally adopted, signed and then ratified by enough countries, will create marine protected areas in these international waters. Only about 1% of the high seas are subject to protective measures and this emblematic tool is considered essential if we hope to protect 30% of the Earth’s land surfaces and oceans by 2030, as all governments of the planet pledged in December.
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“Protected areas on the high seas can play a critical role in building resilience to the impacts of climate change,” said Liz Karan of Pew Charitable Trusts, who called the deal a “significant success.” The agreement on “the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction” also introduces the obligation to carry out environmental impact assessments of planned activities on the high seas.
profit sharing
Finally, a highly sensitive chapter that crystallized tensions until the last minute, the principle of sharing the benefits of marine genetic resources collected on the high seas between developing countries that do not have the means to finance very costly expeditions and researchers struggling to not to be excluded from access to marine genetic resources and from sharing the expected benefits of commercializing these resources – which belong to nobody – from which pharmaceutical or cosmetic companies hope to extract miracle molecules.
As in other international forums, notably the climate negotiations, the debate eventually boiled down to a question of North-South justice, observers commented. In an announcement seen as a gesture to build North-South trust, the European Union in New York pledged €40 million to facilitate the treaty’s ratification and initial implementation.
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In addition, at the “Our Ocean” conference in Panama, which ended on Friday, it pledged to provide a total of more than 800 million euros for the protection of the oceans in 2023. Overall, Panamanian Secretary of State Janaina Tewaney announced that “341 new pledges” totaling nearly $20 billion — including nearly $6 billion from the United States — to protect the oceans were received during this conference.
“A historic moment for our oceans”
France on Sunday welcomed the “historic agreement” reached at the United Nations on the “conservation and sustainable use” of the high seas “opening the way to substantial and unprecedented progress,” in a press release from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Secretariat for the Sea the press release.
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These advances include the “creation of marine protected areas on the high seas,” a requirement to assess the impact of new activities on the high seas, and “fair and equitable” sharing of the benefits of discoveries made in the oceans as “capacity building for… developing countries” to ensure “good governance in marine areas”.
“Our ability to win the race against the climate clock depends to a large extent on the preservation of the oceans and therefore of the high seas, which cover 45% of the earth’s surface,” stressed Secretary of State for the Sea Hervé Berville in a statement sent to AFP. “The high seas will no longer be an unenvironmentally friendly area where the law of the jungle rules and where injustice governs the use of resources,” he said.
EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius hailed “a historic moment for our oceans” and said he was “very proud” of the result. “We are taking a critical step to conserve marine life and biodiversity that is essential to us and future generations,” the European official said in a statement sent to AFP. “Today marks the culmination of more than a decade of preparatory work and international negotiations in which the EU has played a key role,” he stressed. ‘It is also (…) a great win for the achievement of the target we set at COP15 of protecting 30% of the oceans,’ added the Commissioner for Oceans and Peaches.