Landmark agreement for our Seas - 27th March 2023

A historic agreement has finally been reached by United Nations member states to safeguard waters outside national boundaries.

Aiming to conserve 30 percent of the Earth's oceans, the new High Seas Treaty places curbs on marine exploitation of activities from fishing and shipping to mining of the ocean floor.

The treaty builds on an earlier 1982 treaty 'The Law of the Sea', which secured for all nations a common right to fish, navigate, and research in international waters. Despite being a significant step forwards, it afforded marine life protection in a mere 1.2 percent of these waters.

Having taken 20 years of wrangling, deliberations were bookended by two days of intensive talks. These culminated with the declaration "The ship has reached the shore," by UN Ambassador for Oceans, Rena Lee. Protracted debates over financial costs and access demonstrated the tensions between the accepted, urgent need for marine conservation versus national economic interests.

Advanced economies with seabed mining technologies are already exploiting the seabed for tradable commodities such as copper, cobalt and gold. The economic potential of biological material from sealife for medicines and industrial uses, known as marine genetic resources, was another bone of contention.

While poorer nations argued for an equal share of the ocean's bounty, the unequal distribution of these resources and lack of knowledge about the deep ocean left leaders unwilling to offer concrete pledges. The European Union eventually bridged this gulf with 40 million euros towards implementing the treaty.

Marine Protected Areas, another key element of the treaty, establishes strict controls over fishing in a bid to rescue the 10 percent of marine species currently facing extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Their futures remain on the line until the treaty's ratification by all UN member nations, at which point this watershed agreement will come into force.

Jessica Battle of the World Wide Fund for Nature appeared upbeat, saying "What happens on the high seas will no longer be 'out of sight, out of mind'. We can now look at the cumulative impacts on our ocean in a way that reflects the interconnected blue economy and the ecosystems that support it."