A landmark global treaty to safeguard biodiversity in the high seas came into effect on Saturday, providing countries with a legally binding framework to tackle threats such as overfishing and meet a target to protect 30 per cent of the ocean environment by 2030.<\/p>\n
The United Nations treaty, also known as Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), was finalised in March 2023 after 15 years of negotiations, and will allow the creation of a global network of \u201cmarine protected areas\u201d in vast and previously unregulated ocean ecosystems lying in international waters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s two-thirds of the ocean, (and) it\u2019s half the surface of the planet that for the first time will have a comprehensive legal regime,\u201d said Adam McCarthy, first assistant secretary at the Australian foreign ministry and a co-chair of the treaty\u2019s preparatory committee, speaking at a media briefing.<\/p>\n
The treaty reached the threshold of 60 national ratifications on September 19 last year, meaning that it would go formally into operation within 120 days. The number of ratifications has since risen to more than 80, with China, Brazil and Japan adding their names to the list.<\/p>\n
Others, including Britain and Australia, are expected to follow soon. The United States signed the treaty during the previous administration but has not yet ratified it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhilst we only needed 60 for it to enter into force, obviously it\u2019s really critical for its implementation and for it to be as effective as possible for us to achieve global or universal ratification of the treaty,\u201d said Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really aiming for all UN member states to ratify the treaty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the treaty, countries must conduct environmental assessments of activities that have an impact on ocean ecology. It will also create mechanisms allowing nations to share the spoils of the \u201cblue economy\u201d, including \u201cmarine genetic resources\u201d used in industries such as biotechnology.<\/p>\n
Environmentalists say more than 190,000 protected areas would need to be established in order to meet the \u201c30 by 30\u201d target to bring 30pc of the oceans under formal protection by 2030. Currently, only about 8pc \u2014 or 29 million square kilometres \u2014 is protected.<\/p>\n
But the treaty will have little impact on what some conservationists identify as one of the greatest threats facing the marine environment \u2014 the clamour to extract mineral resources from the ocean bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cBBNJ is very ambitious but there are certain defined limits,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question of mining in the substrate or in the seabed simply belongs to the ISA (International Seabed Authority). It\u2019s not something where the BBNJ gets a role.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A landmark global treaty to safeguard biodiversity in the high seas came into effect on Saturday, providing countries with a legally binding framework to tackle threats such as overfishing and meet a target to protect 30 per cent of the ocean environment by 2030. The United Nations treaty, also known as Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15338,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15336\/revisions\/15338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}