Nearly 70 countries at the UN on Wednesday signed a first-ever treaty on protecting the international high seas.
“It’s an amazing moment to be here and see such multilateral cooperation and so much hope,” actress Sigourney Weaver said in New York as the signatures opened.
The treaty marks change in “the way we view the ocean, from a big garbage dump and a place where we can take stuff, to a place that we take care of, that we steward, we respect,” Weaver said.
Photo: AFP
Sixty-seven states signed the treaty on the first day, including the US, China, Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Mexico, as well as the EU as a whole, the UN said.
However, each signatory must still ratify the treaty under its own domestic process.
The treaty would take effect 120 days after 60 members ratify it.
“It is clear that the ocean is in urgent need of protection,” Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Vincent van Quickenborne said.
Without action, “it’s game over,” he said.
After 15 years of discussion, the UN sealed the first treaty on the high seas in June by consensus.
The start of signatures marks “a new chapter” of “establishing meaningful protections” for the oceans, said Nichola Clark of the Ocean Governance Project at The Pew Charitable Trusts.
The high seas are defined as the ocean area starting beyond countries’ exclusive economic zones, or 200 nautical miles (370km) off coastlines — covering nearly half the planet.
A key tool in the treaty would be the ability to create protected marine areas in international waters — only about 1 percent of which are now protected by any conservation measures.
The treaty is seen as crucial to an agreement to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans and lands by 2030, as agreed by governments in a separate accord on biodiversity reached in Montreal in December last year.
Mads Christensen, interim executive director of Greenpeace International, voiced hope that the high-seas treaty would come into force in 2025, when the next UN oceans conference is scheduled in France.
“We have less than seven years to protect 30 percent of the oceans. There is no time to waste,” Christensen said.
“The race to ratification has begun and we urge countries to be ambitious, ratify the treaty and make sure it enters into force in 2025,” he added.
However, even if the treaty draws the 60 ratifications needed to come into force, it would still be well below the universal support for action sought by environmentalists.
The treaty, officially known as the treaty on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, also introduces requirements to carry out environmental impact studies for proposed activities on the high seas.
Such activities, while not listed in the text, would include anything from fishing and maritime transport to deep-sea mining or geoengineering programs.
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