IMO has welcomed the landmark agreement on a new oceans treaty to protect marine biodiversity on the high seas. Negotiators from more than 100 countries completed a UN treaty to protect the high seas on Saturday 5 March 2023, a long-awaited step that environmental groups say will help reverse marine biodiversity losses and ensure sustainable development.
According to International news, the High Seas Treaty aims to place 30% of the seas into protected areas by 2030, up from the current 1.2%. The treaty will enter into force once 60 countries have ratified it.
For most people, the high seas are out of sight, out of mind. But the ocean is a dynamic mosaic of habitats, and the high seas play an important role in the healthy functioning of the whole marine system. With two-thirds of the ocean falling outside national waters, a High Seas Treaty is an essential precondition for protecting 30% of marine areas worldwide
..said Pepe Clarke, Oceans Practice Leader at WWF International.
According to IMO, the BBNJ treaty, also known as the “Treaty of the High Seas”, is an international agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction. The BBNJ treaty addresses, among other things:
- the conservation and sustainable use of marine BBNJ.
- marine genetic resources, including questions on benefit-sharing (MGR).
- Area Based Management Tools (ABMT), including marine protected areas.
- environmental impact assessments (EIA).
- capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology (CB&TMT).
IMO has adopted numerous protective measures, which all ships must adhere to, both in and outside designated sensitive sea areas (PSSAs) and in special areas and emission control areas. These include strict rules on operational discharges as well as areas to be avoided and other ship routing systems, including those aimed at keeping shipping away from whales’ breeding grounds. IMO’s Polar Code is mandatory for ships for operating in the Arctic and Antarctic. IMO has also issued guidance on protecting marine life from underwater ship noise.
The high seas support crucial fisheries, provide habitats for hundreds of thousands of species and mitigate climate change impacts, with 23% of human-related carbon emissions being absorbed by the ocean over the last 10 years. While this slows global warming it also leads to acidification, which has disastrous consequences for marine ecosystems. Already, 25% of known species in the high seas are threatened with extinction.
The waters beyond national jurisdiction, known as the high seas, comprise nearly two-thirds of the ocean’s area, but only roughly 1% of this huge swathe of the planet is protected, and even then often with little effective management in place.
“Countries must formally adopt the treaty and ratify it as quickly as possible to bring it into force, and then deliver the fully protected ocean sanctuaries our planet needs,” said Laura Meller, a Greenpeace oceans campaigner who attended the talks. “The clock is still ticking to deliver 30 by 30. We have half a decade left, and we can’t be complacent.”
