Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/NEW YORK: United Nations (UN) member states would gather in New York City on Monday to resume efforts to forge a long-awaited and elusive treaty to safeguard global marine biodiversity.
Two-thirds of the ocean lies outside the national boundaries on the high seas, where fragmented and unevenly enforced rules seek to minimise human impacts.
The goal of the United Nations (UN) meeting, which will start on Monday and run through March 3, aims to reach a unified agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of massive marine ecosystems. The talks, adequately called the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, resumed after the suspension the previous year without an agreement on a final treaty.
“The ocean is a life support system of our planet,” Boris Worm, a marine biologist Canada’s Dalhousie University, said.
“For the longest time, we didn’t feel we had a large impact on the high seas. But the notion has changed with the expansion of deep-sea fishing, mining, plastic pollution, climate change,” and other human disturbances, he said.
UN’s stance on marine life
The UN talks would focus on critical questions such as how should national boundaries of marine protected places be drawn and by whom? How should institutions have assessed the environmental impacts of commercial activities such as mining and shipping? And who has the power to enforce rules?
“This is our largest international commons,” said Nichola Clark, an oceans expert, who is pursuing negotiations for the non-partisan Pew Research Center in Washington, DC. “We’re optimistic that this upcoming round of negotiations would be the one to get the treaty over the finish line.”
The talks’ goal is not to designate marine protected areas but to establish a mechanism for doing so.
