NEW YORK: Nations, after a decade of negotiations, have finally reached an agreement to protect the world’s high seas – a rich and largely unexplored ecosystem covering nearly half of the planet.
The long-awaited “High Seas Treaty” places 30 percent of the oceans into protected areas by 2030, with a bid to safeguard and recover marine nature. The historic agreement was reached on Saturday evening, after 38 hours of negotiations, at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
The talks had been held up for years over disagreements on funding and fishing rights.
A bid to protect the marine eco-system
In the last international agreement on ocean protection signed in 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, led to the establishment of an area called the high seas – international waters where all countries hold a right to fish, ship and conduct research – but only 1.2 percent of these waters are protected. Marine life outside of these protected areas has been facing risks from climate change, overfishing and shipping traffic. Nearly 10 percent of global marine species are at risk of extinction, as per the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The new protected areas, established in the treaty, will restrict the volume of fishing, the routes of shipping lanes and exploration activities such as deep sea mining – extraction of minerals from a sea bed 200m or further below the surface.
Environmental groups have been concerned about the adverse impacts of mining processes like disturbance caused to animal breeding grounds, noise pollution and production of substances that are toxic for marine life.
