UN member states fail to pass Ocean Treaty on fifth attempt

What were UN member states hoping to achieve?

The UN High Seas treaty has been in negotiation for the last decade. Despite this, it has never been signed.

On the back of UN member states pledging to protect 30 percent of our planet’s land and seas by 2030, world leaders and environmentalists had hoped to ensure that the high seas are afforded this environmental security too.

The failure to extend legal protection to the high seas means the vast majority of the world’s oceans will continue to see commercial fisheries depleting wild fish populations at a dangerously unsustainable rate – at least for the time being.

This is because members of the UN could not agree on how to equally share or redistribute the benefits from marine life or how to establish which areas would be protected.

The meeting in New York was the UN’s second attempt to get policy passed in 2022 and the fifth attempt overall.

Official statements at the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon have conjured hope for success, as almost all political leaders present openly expressed their support for the legislation to go ahead.

What progress was made?

UN member states and conservationists have starkly different outlooks on what was accomplished at the week-long New York meeting.

In the eyes of environmentalists who have witnessed discussions surrounding the Ocean Treaty continue without success for the last decade, it seems like it could be ‘too late’ to save our ocean ecosystems.

Sure, securing the development of new ocean sanctuaries was a small step forward. But Laura Meller from Greenpeace’s Protect The Oceans campaign said that wealthy countries are ‘moving too slowly to find compromises, despite their commitments.’

Countries in the Global South, in particular the Caribbean and Pacific Island nations, are highly aware of the consequences of overfishing and negligence due to their proximity and reliance on the ocean. Both have advocated strongly for the treaty to be signed.

As a result of this, many believe countries in the Global North are to blame for hindered any agreements when it came down to the final days. They often placed priority on future fishing profits over the protection of the oceans.

Greenpeace continues to warn the UN general assembly that reaching the target of protecting 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030 is absolutely vital to give marine life the chance to recover.

Why is protecting the high seas important?

Aside from the harrowing possibility of a collapsed ocean ecosystem, the inequity of the fishing industry is of serious concern.

In West Africa, fish stocks are being severely depleted due to large fishing vessels from Europe operating off the coast. This is causing food insecurity across the region and harms the livelihood of fishermen who provide for their families through the trade.

On top of this, large fishing vessels have the tools to retrieve extremely large catches, which smaller boats do not. This is problematic, as scientists have discovered that leaving large fish in the ocean helps to reduce overall carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

When a large fish dies, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean and sequesters the carbon it contains with it. This adds to ‘blue carbon,’ or rather all carbon captured and stored by oceans, which is a lot, by the way.

The ocean is known to store about 30-50 percent of all CO2 emitted from fossil fuels. It also stores 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere and 20 times more than plants and soil combined.

Considering that the planet is largely made up of these very important ecosystems, it’s certainly worth protecting them. A failure to sign in the treaty will only prolong the depletion of ocean life and places emphasis on how challenging it will be to convince all nations to put our planet before profit.