To ensure the conservation of species and their environment, a new United Nations treaty on the sustainable use and protection of the High Seas has finally been drafted after a two-week round-the-clock marathon of talks in New York.

The agreed framework has overhauled the requirements of environmental impact assessments for natural resource extraction and set a universal standard for the procedure of conducting them and reporting findings.

Furthermore, the treaty would grant the parties to the treaty the right to establish conservation zones and protected areas in international waters, where no country would normally be able to enforce law.

The main efforts were carried out by the EU, UK, US, and China, and were rapidly accelerated since the COP15 summit in Montreal last year. However, discussions of the additions to the Convention on the Law of the Sea have been ongoing since 2004, reports New Scientist. 

Two years ago, 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, and many conservationists see this new treaty as the best hope of achieving that landmark.

WS has reported on findings that when the entirety of a marine ecosystem is preserved, fishing industries benefit even if a season only lasts a short period, Among the hopes of the signees will be that diminishing catch rates for prized fish like tuna can be permanently reversed.

Regarding signatures, as with all UN treaties, they are only legally enforceable if a nation makes itself a legal party to them. Once 60 parties ratify any UN treaty, it is considered international law, and enters into force.

Among the work still to be done will be to decide how marine protected areas in international waters will be established, managed, and the protections on them enforced.

As was seen when the US, France, UK, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel failed to ratify the UN ban on nuclear weapons, adopted by over 140 countries in the year 2020, or as several nations' unwillingness to implement the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court, the UN has little power to force nations into compliance which don't adopt the treaty into their own law.

"The treaty lays down broad commitments to protect 30% of the high seas. Which parts will be protected, and how strictly, remains to be decided," marine biologist Helen Scales told New Scientist.

"My hope is that the treaty will implement meaningful protection, that is strictly safeguarding areas from all potential sources of harm."

SHARE This Conservation Breakthrough 17 Years In The Making…