After 17 Years of Negotiation, UN Finally Agrees on Treaty to Protect the High Seas

After two weeks of non-stop negotiations in New York, a new United Nations treaty on the sustainable use and protection of the High Seas has been drafted. The agreement is aimed at ensuring the conservation of species and their environment, with a focus on overhauling the requirements for environmental impact assessments of natural resource extraction.  The treaty would allow parties to establish conservation zones and protected areas in international waters, where no country would normally be able to enforce the law. The EU, UK, US, and China played a major role in the negotiations, which were rapidly accelerated after the COP15 summit in Montreal last year. The discussions on the additions to the Convention on the Law of the Sea have been ongoing since 2004. The concept of protecting 30% of the land and oceans on Earth for the purpose of conservation was advanced at one of the summits on the parties to the Paris Climate Agreement two years ago. Many conservationists see this new treaty as the best hope of achieving that landmark. When an entire marine ecosystem is preserved, fishing industries benefit, even if a season only lasts for a short period. The hope of the signatories is that diminishing catch rates for prized fish like tuna can be permanently reversed. As with all UN treaties, the agreement will only be legally enforceable if nations become legal parties to it. Once 60 parties ratify any UN treaty, it is considered international law and enters into force. Work still needs to be done to decide how marine protected areas in international waters will be established, managed, and the protections on them enforced.