The UN headquarters in New York will host the working sessions of the fifth round of negotiations of the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction from this Monday, February 20, to March 3, focused on the approval of a global treaty for the protection of the oceans. The new summit on the oceans intends, in this sense, to unlock the document outlined in mid-2022, which was suspended due to the opposition of several of the participating delegations.
The working document with which this new round of negotiations begins has been distributed by the UN (see draft of February 1) with the hope that it may be ratified during the course of these decisive negotiations. “The objective of this Agreement is to ensure the conservation and sustainable use
of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, now and in the long term, through the effective implementation of the relevant provisions of the Convention and the promotion of cooperation and
international coordination”, indicates the document in its first explanatory part.
In addition to this formal declaration, the agreement may establish regulations of great importance on issues such as the declaration of marine protected areas.
Failure to agree on this treaty would jeopardize the goal of protecting 30% of the oceans by 2030 (known as the 30×30 goal, approved at COP15 of the Biodiversity Summit in Montreal in December 2022.
Among the conflicting points that must be resolved before approving a final document, are the financing mechanisms of protection actions, as well as the creation of capacities and the fair distribution of the benefits of marine resources.
The UN talks will focus on key questions, including: How should the boundaries of marine protected areas be drawn and by whom? How should institutions assess the environmental impacts of commercial activities, such as shipping and mining? And who has the power to enforce the rules?, summarizes the journalist Chritina Larson, envoy of the AP agency to this summit on oceans.
The oceans “are our greatest global commons,” Nichola Clark, an ocean expert who follows negotiations for the Pew Research Center, recalled to the AP. “We are optimistic that this next round of negotiations will be the one that will achieve a definitive treaty.”
In any case, the goal of the talks is not really to designate marine protected areas, but rather to establish a mechanism to do so.
Marine biologist Simon Ingram of the University of Plymouth (UK) stresses that there is an urgent need for an agreement. “It’s a really pressing time for this, especially when you have things like deep-sea mining that could be a real threat to biodiversity before we can study and understand what lives on the ocean floor,” says Simon Ingram.
“We need a legally binding framework that can allow countries to work together to achieve these goals that they agreed to,” said Jessica Battle, an expert on ocean governance at the World Wide Fund for Nature.
