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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS