It was an emotional moment. For almost 20 years, the world’s countries have spent discussing how they can better protect the world’s oceans. When it was finally time to make a decision, it still required two weeks of debate and finally 38 hours of bone-chilling and sleepless negotiations, before the new “High Seas” treaty on the world’s oceans was finally adopted this month at the UN headquarters in New York. Several times it was unclear whether the 193 countries would agree, but they did. – The ship has reached port, said conference leader Rana Lee from Singapore from the podium to applause from the delegates present. The agreement is called historic because it is the first time the world’s countries can agree on a practice to protect the world’s oceans. Although in theory they have already agreed on it for a long time. There is broad agreement that the sea is vital for us humans, it produces enormous amounts of fish and shellfish and half of the oxygen we breathe comes from the algae in the sea. But even so, the sea has major problems with pollution and overfishing, and it is therefore clear that joint action is required to protect them. Because the world’s oceans are in reality just one big global ocean, where both fish and pollution move across all national borders. Battle for precious minerals and deep-sea DNA Although the ocean is naturally connected, we humans have divided it up and down. In 1982, the world’s countries agreed that each country has the right to decide over an area of sea that lies 200 nautical miles (370 km) from the country’s coast – the so-called exclusive economic zone. Many countries have already established large marine protected areas within their own zones. It is often good business, because it can both bring large tourist revenues and much more fish in the net when a country protects its marine areas. For example, the catch of tuna has increased by 54 per cent in Hawaii, after the USA created a large protected marine area in 2006. The US could do this because the state of Hawaii is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and therefore gives the US national rights over a large section of the open ocean. About two-thirds of the sea is very far from both islands and the coast of the mainland. Here, no country has actual ownership, but all countries have the right to fish, research and transport goods. There are almost no protected marine areas in this zone because no country has had the right to limit other countries’ right to use these areas. The areas have been like a kind of ocean’s wild west, with no sheriff in sight. This is where the new sea treaty comes into play. The treaty itself will not protect so much as a drop in the ocean, but the agreement will become the decisive international legal foundation, which for the first time ever will make it possible to create protected areas far out in the open seas. It is not only about the right to fish, but increasingly also about the right to the sought-after minerals that lie on the seabed, and which can be used, among other things, in the green transition. At the same time, it has been difficult to agree on how the rights to the oceans’ so-called genetic resources should be distributed. Just like life on land, life in the sea contains a lot of different substances, which can be used to invent new, ground-breaking medicine or used in industry in different ways. First step towards more life in the sea Even though the 193 UN countries have now agreed to enter into the new sea treaty, there is still a long way to go before it begins to work. First, the treaty must be officially adopted, which is only a formality. Then at least 60 countries must individually sign the treaty before it can enter into force. Then the countries must each write the treaty into their own legislation. Only then does the treaty have legal validity, and it is only then that individual sea areas in the high seas can be designated and established as marine reserves. But before the protection can work, these reserves must be monitored and controlled in practice. One of the possible areas in sight is tropical waters west of Costa Rica, where cool and nutrient-rich water flows from the depths to the surface. This makes the area a hotspot for fish and other marine animals. The area is outside Costa Rica’s and Nicaragua’s own economic zone, but with the new maritime treaty it will still be possible to protect the area. There is a use for many such areas, because the ambition is for a total of 30 percent of the world’s oceans to be protected as early as 2030. The world’s countries adopted this last year. But the world is in a hurry. Because even though there are already thousands of marine reserves, only 2.9 percent of the world’s total marine area is under “full and effective” protection. Sometimes the protected areas only exist as lines on a map. So even if the UN conference could declare that “the ship had reached port” for the new treaty, and it is welcomed as a great step forward, there are still many nautical miles to go before the world’s oceans reach safe harbor.
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New historic agreement to protect the world’s oceans
