What is the UN high seas treaty?

Described as an ‘Historic deal, an extraordinary diplomatic achievement’, The high seas treaty, which aims to conserve 30% of the open ocean by 2030, was recently signed by 193 UN states after two weeks of round the clock talks in New York. If successfully implemented, it could turn the tide in the fight to conserve ocean biodiversity by alleviating some of the stress brought about by practices such as intensive fishing and deep sea mining. But while this treaty is a much needed win for ocean ecology, are its ambitions too lofty? With so many countries involved, how can we be certain that everyone will play by the rules, and how do we look after species that stray from these protected areas? But before that, it is important to understand what kinds of oceanic issues the treaty hopes to address, as well as what the treaty actually involves. Marine scientist and commentator Liberty Denman....

Liberty - There are lots of challenges that the ocean faces. There is a lot of compounding threats as a result of anthropogenic pressure. But if I were to pick, say the top three, I'd say climate change, overfishing and habitat degradation. They all affect the ecosystem in lots of different ways and all of these are quite interlinked. So climate change causes ocean acidification and that means there's more CO2 in the ocean which affects lots of animals across the board really. It affects the temperature, affects how they function. For example, crabs and crustaceans. They struggle to create their shells and maintain the shells with calcium because of the chemical changes in the ocean. Overfishing and habitat degradation are also hugely linked to climate change, but also issues in their own right. So obviously overfishing, if you're continuously taking more than the populations can keep up with, after a while you end up with nothing left and they all naturally rely on their habitats. So when that is degraded, you are also impacting their ability for the ecosystem to be resilient.

Will - And now we have this high seas treaty to try and remediate some of these issues. But before we get into what it does, what are the high seas?

Liberty - The high seas are the waters extending beyond a nation's economic exclusive zone, which is typically 200 nautical miles offshore. This comprises approximately two thirds of the ocean and yet only one to 1.2% of it is protected currently, which obviously is not a great statistic.

Will - And we're trying to get that number up to 30% from 1%.

Liberty - Yes. So we have higher than 1% across the entire ocean. That's obviously just within the high seas. But the high seas treaty that's now seen 193 signatures from the UN member states, which is amazing, establishes a legal framework that will finally allow countries to designate international waters MPAs if agreed by consensus. So this is particularly groundbreaking as from previous negotiations. We have set the target coined 30 by 30, which you just mentioned. Naturally a huge amount of that responsibility comes under those waters and we need to be able to protect what lies within the high seas. So this allows us to actually begin to implement this, which is really exciting.

Will - Are there particular areas of the high seas that this treaty is gonna focus on conserving?

Liberty - Rather than conserving specific locations per se, the high seas treaty establishes a legal framework for the protection and management of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, what's called BBNJ. These fall under four main categories that we're focusing on. So that is capacity building, the sharing and transfer of marine technology and other resources, genetic resources and access to that and how we use it for other areas. Then there's area-based managements for things like MPAs that we've just been talking about and also environmental impact assessments which are particularly relevant in the deep sea, whether it is for mining fisheries or any other extractive activities

Will -  So is that saying we're conserving 30% of the ocean, but it's not one specific place that we're trying to conserve?

Liberty - No, ultimately we need to identify exactly where we are going to conserve based off of those qualities. So all of these particularly key areas that come under the BBNJ, we are going to be focusing our efforts based off of that and there will be particular areas that fall into that. So there may be magnesium nodules in the deep sea and while they're very, very desired, we also need to protect them because they're a very key environment and we don't know how that's going to affect the entire ecosystem because the deep sea has been functioning for, well, for longer than we can possibly fathom. So for us to now go in and change it at the rate we are, we need to understand these systems before we can exploit them because we don't know the ramifications that's going to have.

Will - So that's step one is it, finding out where best to conserve?

Liberty - Yes, and also the other thing is time is naturally of the essence. So we can't spend all our time just understanding, naturally we do actually need to implement these rules and these obligations, but we don't have sort of set places that we are going 'Right. The High Seas treaty says here, here and here will be designated', it will be based off of the discussions that have been around the BBNJ.

Will - These areas that are going to be turned into MPAs. Are they a complete no-go zone or are there sort of tiers to which fishing vessels or mining vessels can enter?

Liberty - This is where marine protection and marine protected areas are particularly complex and it's also very difficult for someone who isn't necessarily in the space to follow because a headline will say, yes, we've protected this area, but what does that actually mean? It doesn't always mean nothing is happening there. And that is the goal. So at this point we do need site-based protection. So we need to use an area-based approach, which will actually protect the whole area from the surface to the sea floor. And that is really important because otherwise you end up with allowing some things and not others and it may not actually be protecting that part of the ocean as effectively as it needs to.

Will - Why did it take 15 years to implement this?

Liberty - So one of the main reasons why the negotiations took so long was the divergent interests of coastal and landlocked states. So they had very different perspectives on the extent of coastal state jurisdiction, the allocation of resources in the ocean. And another big challenge was the need to balance economic development with environmental protection, particularly with the exploitation of delivering resources. So fisheries is obviously a very key one here. So ultimately when you have 193 states trying to agree on something, it's not going to be a speedy process.

Will - So you've got sort of island nations who rely quite heavily on fish being told they suddenly can't fish. Is that why they're having issues with it?

Liberty - Possibly not quite as simple as that, but there has definitely been a divide between the global north and the global south. In the global north we are probably a little bit more distanced from the natural environment and how closely we rely on it, whereas the global south is probably a little bit more in touch with that reality that we rely on it so heavily. And so there's also gonna be an imbalance there in perhaps our appreciation of it and where all these resources actually come from.

Will - So this does sound great, this treaty, but surely we aren't going from an unregulated disaster to an ocean paradise. Is this as a straightforward win as it sounds?

Liberty - So it is a really nice easy hack to answer science questions - It depends <laugh>. It always depends. I think it's important that we celebrate this as a win, as it is a monumental moment in history for marine policy. I mean, it's taken us 15 years to get here, so I think we do need to take the win. However, it is also really important for everyone to know that this 59 page document doesn't magically make all of our worries go away. It still needs to be adopted and implemented. So there is still a lot of collaborative work that needs to be done here. So we can't just say, 'yeah, box ticked, that's finished now'. We still need to work with this. But it's a very good starting point to have.