This historic moment took place after a whole 48 hours of working and discussions were hosted in the UN New York headquarters which resulted in the conference President, Rena Lee from Singapore proudly announcing that the Treaty has been agreed on.
The Pew Charitable Trust
The ocean plays an important role in the development of economies, and our livelihood, ensuring climate regulation while also playing a major role in providing food all around the globe. This importance is heavily acknowledged by countries, such as the Maldives that heavily depend on the ocean in their day-to-day life, not only as the main source of protein in the diet of most Maldivians, but the ocean acts as a provider of the second largest industry in the Maldives: fishing.
But the ocean is not only important to countries such as the Maldives, this importance is a global one, as we depend on the nutrition and other benefits provided by the ocean for our survival. Due to the sheer importance of the ocean, a 15th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) was added under the name “life below water” with the purpose of conserving the ocean, seas and marine sustainably in order to protect the benefits we reap from the ocean for future generations as well.
Ten separate goals fall under SDG14 in order to protect and use our oceans in the most sustainable way. Out of this, the goal set for 2020 was protecting and restoring the ecosystem, implementing sustainable fishing, ending subsidies contributing to overfishing, conserving coastal and marine areas, and ending subsidies contributing to overfishing. The next short-term goal is to reduce marine pollution by 2025.
Just last year the United Nations (UN) hosted the ocean conference 2022 under the theme “scaling up ocean action based on science and innovation for the implementation of SDG 14: Stocktaking, partnerships and solutions”, where eight main dialogues were discussed in order to support the implementation of SDG14 which included:
With this conferencing having taken place over a year ago, another major accomplishment has been marked as of Saturday, 4th March 2023 as after almost 20 years of hosting discussions and talks, the UN member states have finally agreed on a legal framework for parts of the ocean outside national boundaries. This historic moment took place after a whole 48 hours of working and discussions were hosted in the UN New York headquarters which resulted in the conference President, Rena Lee from Singapore proudly announcing that the Treaty has been agreed on.
“In Singapore, we like to go on learning journeys and this has been the learning journey of a lifetime,”
While members will gather on a later date to formally adopt the text, this agreement marks a moment that will be remembered as this is a major step towards the right direction in protecting the seas.
What does this agreement really mean?
While everyone is celebrating the accomplishment and this historic agreement for the high seas treaty, many of us do not know what the result of this agreement is going to look like in the future. So, let’s dig deeper into what exactly the purpose of this treaty is.
The discussion of this treaty has been ongoing for over two decades, and it was as of last year that the final country opposing the treaty agreed to it. The final steps towards the beginning of this treaty took place during the Cop15 Summit hosted in 2022 where the Republic of Congo dropped their opposition, finally giving full support to the deal to halt the destruction of the Earth's ecosystems.
With the agreement of the High Seas Treaty, a legal framework can finally be created for establishing vast marine protected areas (MAPs) to protect against the loss of wildlife and share out the genetic resources of the high seas. Upon this agreement, a Conference of the Parties (CoP) will meet periodically in order to enable member states to be held accountable regarding issues such as governance and bio-diversity.
This treaty is going to play an important role in enforcing the 30x30 pledge that was made by countries at the UN Biodiversity Conference in December 2022 which was a pledge made to protect at least 30 percent of the planet’s land and 30 percent of the seas by 2030.
The agreement of this treaty is not only a historic moment as members finally came upon an agreement following two decades of discussion, but this agreement is also going to play a major role in climate change and marine as well as wildlife in the coming years.
“High seas marine protected areas can play a critical role in the impacts of climate change, Governments and civil society must now ensure the agreement is adopted and rapidly enters into force and is effectively implemented to safeguard high seas biodiversity”
