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A BEACON OF HOPE?
from Sabmag 78 sample
by SAB Magazine
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Among the resolutions that came out of the UN Biodiversity Conference held in Montreal in December 2022, was a landmark agreement (known as 30 x 30) that aims to reverse ecological destruction by protecting 30% of the planet’s land and water areas by 2030.
Three months on, we have something else to celebrate: the signing of the UN High Seas Treaty, described by Arlo Hemphill, senior oceans campaigner with Greenpeace USA as, “the largest conservation agreement in the history of the world’. The accord establishes a legal framework for the more than 60% of the world’s oceans that lie outside the 200 nautical mile zone over which coastal nations have jurisdiction.
The framework identifies four key initiatives and establishes appropriate methodologies for implementing them:
• establishing area-based management tools including marine protected areas
• sharing benefits of marine genetic resources (MGRs)
• capacity building and technology transfer
• conducting and reporting environmental impact assessments for activities generating potential impacts on the area.
Discussions began in the early 2000s, long before the conservation of global biodiversity was on the radar screens of national governments. What has finally emerged is an agreement acknowledging that the deep oceans are part of the shared inheritance of humankind and can not be appropriated by individual nations or commercial entities.
Not withstanding such acknowledgement, the agreement almost foundered on the reef that marks the boundary between corporate interest and common good. With near certainty that the research being conducted in the high seas by companies from the Global North will discover new and commercially valuable MGRs (such as medicines, foods and textiles), representatives from the Global South demanded assurances they would receive their fair share of the benefits. Thankfully, the hard-won consensus on MGRs finally guided the accord safely to port on March 4.
While there are ongoing discussions and much wordsmithing still to be done, the UN High Seas Treaty is a beacon of hope that we may indeed find the resolve to achieve that 30 x 30 goal.
Jim Taggart, FRAIC Editor
