Delegates come close but fail again to clinch high seas protection treaty

Delegates come close but fail again to clinch high seas protection treaty

Subject: Environment

Section: Climate change

Context:

Treaty failed to be concluded at the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction.

What is the proposed UN High Seas treaty?

• Also referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for the Ocean’, the treaty to deal with Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction has been under discussion for several years.
• The proposed treaty concerns the ocean existing beyond the Exclusive Economic Zones that lie from the coast of a country to about 200 nautical miles or 370 km into the sea, till where it has special rights for exploration. Waters beyond that are known as open seas or high seas.
• The treaty was to be negotiated under the United Nations Convention on Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982 which governs the rights of countries regarding marine resources. As there is no treaty for conserving the health of vast swathes of the earth’s oceans, a UN resolution in 2017 had decided to rectify this while setting 2022 as the deadline.
• The pandemic resulted in many delays, and later, a High Ambition Coalition, which now has more than 100 countries including India, the US, and the UK, came about and put the focus on ‘30×30’ goals – protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030.
• Biodiversity is a cross-cutting issue, but the current marine policy and management framework, established by UNCLOS, is sectoral, as well as incomplete in its coverage and inconsistent with present-day needs.
• Four areas key to a sustainable biodiversity conservation agreement were discussed in New York: sharing marine genetic resources (MGRs) fairly; implementing area-based management tools like marine protected areas (MPAs);setting standards for environmental impact assessments for activities on the high seas; and ensuring less-industrialized countries can meet treaty objectives through a mechanism for sharing marine technology and knowledge.

How are the world’s oceans regulated as of now?

• Some treaties, along with the UNCLOS, regulate the conduct of actors on the high seas.
• The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is an international treaty which was adopted and signed in 1982.
• UNCLOS is the only international convention which stipulates a framework for state jurisdiction in maritime spaces. It provides a different legal status to different maritime zones.
• It replaced the four Geneva Conventions of April, 1958, which respectively concerned the territorial sea and the contiguous zone, the continental shelf, the high seas, fishing and conservation of living resources on the high seas.
• The Convention has created three new institutions on the international scene:
  • the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
  • the International Seabed Authority
  • the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf
• UNCLOS as the currently prevailing law of the sea is binding completely.
• There are 17 parts, 320 articles and nine annexes to UNCLOS
• The law of the sea provides for full rights to nations for a 200-mile zonefrom their shoreline. The sea and oceanic bed extending this area is regarded to be Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and any country can use these waters for their economic utilization.

Pacific Small Islands Developing States (PSIDS)

• The PSIDS comprises of the 14 Pacific Island countries viz. The Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

About Small Island developing states (SIDS)

• SIDS is a group of small island countries that tend to share similar sustainable development challenges.
• The challenges include small but growing populations, limited resources, remoteness, susceptibility to natural disasters, vulnerability to external shocks, excessive dependence on international trade, and fragile environments.
• Their growth and development is also held back by high communication, energy and transportation costs and little to no opportunity to create economies of scale.

Location

• These countries are across the globe in the Caribbean, the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean and South China Sea.

Groupings

• These are broken down into following three geographic regions, with each region having it’s own regional cooperation body.
• Caribbean: The Caribbean Community
• Pacific: The Pacific Islands Forum
• Africa, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and South China Sea (AIMS)

Pacific Island nations