Landmark High Seas Treaty set to protect marine ecosystems

A long-awaited United Nations High Seas Treaty to protect the world’s oceans was approved following late-night meetings in New York on Saturday, leading delegates to celebrate a hard-won victory in negotiations that first began in 2004.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the ship has reached the shore,” said Rena Lee of Singapore, president of the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), as the delegates burst into applause.

Among other things, the BBNJ treaty will ensure that 30% of the world’s oceans are put into protected areas, more money supports marine conservation, and the legal framework establishes how marine life and resources will be used moving forward.

The High Seas Alliance, formed in 2011 to advance the treaty, says the high seas include some of the most biologically important, least protected, and most critically threatened ecosystems in the world.

Although formal adoption of the treaty is still required, the organization—which includes the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in its work—says it will help to protect biodiversity and limit the impacts of overfishing, deep-seabed mining, shipping, and climate change on the high seas.

“The High Seas, the area of ocean that lies beyond countries’ national waters, is the largest habitat on Earth and home to millions of species,” the alliance said in its statement. “With currently just over 1% of the High Seas protected, the new treaty will provide a pathway to establish marine protected areas in these waters.”

Andrew Deutz, Director of Global Policy, Institutions & Conservation Finance for The Nature Conservancy, said the treaty “leaves room for improvement” but time is of the essence in moving forward with concerted action.

“Whether this has arrived in time to slow the accelerating ecological crisis happening in our ocean will depend on how quickly countries can ratify the treaty at national level and start mainstreaming ambitions like 30×30,” he said, referring to the global pledge to protect 30% of all biodiversity by 2030.

“If they can do so swiftly, putting people and planet above politics, we may yet have a chance to move beyond the damaging status quo.”

The World Wildlife Federation (WWF) said it welcomed the decision to protect the vast portions of ocean that fall outside of the territorial control of countries and tend to be “out of sight, out of mind.” The agreement calls for impact assessments of shipping and other activities on the high seas to make them visible and ensure transparency.

“The High Seas Treaty will allow for the kind of oversight and integration we need if we want the ocean to keep providing the social, economic and environmental benefits humanity currently enjoys,” said Jessica Battle, the senior oceans expert who led WWF’s negotation team during the talks. “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.”

Battle warns that the welcome news was more of a starting point than an end game for BBNJ negotiators. “This is not a finish line,” she said. “For the treaty’s good intentions to deliver results on the water, we’ve got to keep the pressure up. … Words matter, but our ocean needs action.”