DAfter years of negotiations, the UN member states have agreed on the text for the first international high seas convention to protect the world’s oceans. “The ship has reached shore,” said UN conference chief Rena Lee on Saturday evening at the United Nations headquarters in New York to applause from delegates. The UN member states had been struggling in vain for an agreement to protect biodiversity in the high seas for more than 15 years. A round of negotiations only ended in August without a result.
According to conference leader Lee, the text, which the delegates agreed on after two weeks of intensive discussions, can no longer be changed significantly. “There will be no more resumption or substantive discussions,” Lee told negotiators. The agreement will be formalized once it has been reviewed by legal experts and translated into the six official languages of the United Nations, Lee said.
Around 60 percent of the world’s oceans that do not fall under a country’s exclusive economic zone because they are more than 370 kilometers from the nearest coast are referred to as the high seas. Only about one percent of the high seas is currently protected by international agreements.
Environmental groups are pushing for better protection of the world’s oceans in the face of threats from global warming, pollution and overfishing. The oceans produce half of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere and absorb a significant portion of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities.