David Stanway
SINGAPORE, Jan 17 (Reuters) – A landmark global treaty to protect biodiversity on the high seas came into force on Saturday, providing countries with a legally binding framework to tackle threats such as overfishing and meet a goal of protecting 30% of the marine environment by 2030.
The UN treaty, also known as Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), which was finalized in March 2023 after 15 years of negotiations, will allow the creation of a global network of “marine protected areas” in vast and previously unregulated marine ecosystems in international waters.
“For the first time, two-thirds of the ocean and half of the Earth’s surface will have a comprehensive legal regime,” Adam McCarthy, Australia’s first assistant secretary of state for foreign affairs and co-chair of the treaty’s preparatory committee, told a media briefing.
On September 19 last year, the treaty reached the threshold of ratification by 60 countries, which means that the treaty will officially enter into force within 120 days. Since then, the number of ratifying countries has grown to more than 80, with China, Brazil and Japan also joining the list.
Other countries including the UK and Australia are expected to follow soon. The United States signed the treaty during the previous administration but has not yet ratified it.
Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups, said: “While we only need 60 treaties for the treaty to enter into force, clearly it is really critical for the implementation of the treaty and for the treaty to be as effective as possible in achieving global or universal ratification of the treaty.”
“Our real goal is to get all U.N. member states to ratify the treaty.”
Under the treaty, countries must conduct environmental assessments of activities that affect marine ecology. It will also establish mechanisms to allow countries to share the fruits of the “blue economy”, including “marine genetic resources” used by industries such as biotechnology.
Environmentalists say more than 190,000 protected areas will need to be created to meet the “30 x 30” target of placing 30% of the ocean under formal protection by 2030. Currently, only about 8%, or 29 million square kilometers (11.2 million square miles), is protected.
But the treaty will have little impact on what some conservationists see as one of the biggest threats to the marine environment – calls to extract mineral resources from the seabed.
“BBNJ is very ambitious, but there are some clear limitations,” McCarthy said.
“The issue of mining on the seabed or seabed belongs entirely to the ISA (International Seabed Authority). It is not something in which the BBNJ has a role.”
(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
