Will the high seas treaty actually work?

Now that the treaty exists, and the groundwork is laid, what happens next? The reaction to the treaty has been an almost uniform one of ‘this is a good start but a lot more needs to be done.’ This lone announcement is absolutely not a cure for all of the ocean’s ills. Indeed, it’s not just an ecological issue but an economic one as well. The value of the ecosystem services of the open ocean amounts to tens of trillions of dollars. In carbon terms alone, since 1870 the value of carbon captured by the deep ocean is close to $30 trillion. So how do we balance the protection of these areas with the economic needs of fishing, mining and carbon capture? And what about the industries and economies that already have existing vested interests in the very same parts of the ocean? Guy Standing, author of ‘The Blue Commons: Rescuing the economy of the sea...’

Guy - Well, I think the euphoria of the new treaty is slightly overdone. We are not at the beginning of a process. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is called UNCLOS, was drawn up in 1982 and regarded by the Secretary General of the United Nations at the time as the most significant legal document of the 20th century. And that convention only came into effect 12 years later when sufficient countries had ratified it. And 28 years after that, they still haven't agreed on a sharing mechanism for the benefits or a mining code in the deep sea. And that, I think, is the context in which we have to be addressing this new treaty.

Chris - So if we've got that treaty, why do we need a new one?

Guy - Well, the strange thing is that UNCLOS effectively gave countries of the world, coastal countries 138 million square kilometers of seabed in what are called exclusive economic zones. And within those areas, we now have a variety of marine protected areas. The new treaty addresses the high seas outside the exclusive economic zones. And although it's a very large area, most fishing actually takes place within the exclusive economic zones, over 90%. So really we should be thinking of improving the mechanisms at national level. And here, one of the biggest problems has been over the years that overfishing and ridiculous amounts of mining has been helped by governments giving vast subsidies, huge subsidies, over 40 billion a year are given in subsidies. Without those subsidies, we would not have high seas fishing at all because the costs of fuel subsidies are sufficient that they wouldn't be doing it.

Chris - If we've got a country and it's got a significant vested interest in an area exploiting it through mining, subsidy, mining or whatever, what happens to that industry with this new treaty?

Guy - Well, I don't think the mining question is going to be helped by this new treaty at all if I'm honest, because essentially the International Seabed Authority, which was set up un by UNCLOS, which only came to effect in 1994 in Kingston, Jamaica, is meant to be drawing up a code of practice for deep sea mining. And it has failed to do so in 28 years. And there's no real prospect. And we're going to see a wild west bonanza frenzy of deep sea mining starting in July this year as I've written about. The problem with the deep sea mining frenzy is that a little country called Nauru backed by a Canadian mining company, noticed a clause in the UNCLOS, which said that if a country applies to start deep sea mining, it has precisely two years to draw up a code. Otherwise they will go ahead. And the problem is now applied in June, 2021 and in June this year, because there's no prospect of such a mining code, they'll be able to go ahead unless somehow we're going to get an international moratorium. But that has not been addressed by the Ocean's Treaty and it is a huge problem on the horizon.

Chris - And so what will be the consequences then? This is basically open season for anyone who wants to get out there and prospect on the seafloor.

Guy - It's going to be ecologically catastrophic because we're talking about disturbing the seabed at vast depths, with vast noise, with vast machinery and so on. And they're absolutely right to be really scared on our behalf and on nature's behalf about the damage that this can do. So we are facing an ecological challenge this year that is truly frightening.

Chris - Let's pretend I wave a magic wand and suddenly it's active. What happens to all these ventures once the treaty kicks in and they're on someone's turf that's covered by the treaty,

Guy - You've got to realize that everything takes time. And first of all, you've got to get countries, governments of member countries to sign to ratify. That's the first process. And you've got to get a sufficient number to ratify. Most of these treaties require 60 or more countries to ratify. So that's the first process. The second thing, you've got to then set up an institutional mechanism, a body to put into effect the commitments that have been made in this fairly long and rather abstract treaty 59 pages. And that's, that'll also take time. Then you go to appoint the officials, then you've got to get the budget, then you've got to decide on the mechanisms for doing it. So the process takes years. I'm afraid.

Chris - With any kind of agreement, there has to be a funding model and there also has to be a policing model. So my question to you is, who is going to fund this and who's going to police it? And will that policing actually have teeth? So perhaps through the funding mechanism, they can actually do something?

Guy - The biggest problem of all in this regard is the country that could fund it very easily will be the one country that will not ratify the ocean treaty. And that's the United States. The United States still has not ratified the UNCLOS. It has a practice of being thinking it's exceptional and therefore it doesn't ratify international treaties because it doesn't think that the small governments and poor countries should have control over their national policy. And, it is a very unfortunate reality that the United States has not ratified the major convention. This new treaty in a sense is an offshoot of the UN convention and it's a good offshoot potentially. But if your major country, which is involved in many of these mining problems and so on, stays out of the process, do you think the Russians or the Chinese will adhere to rules? Think again. So we have a reality check here. I think the real challenge for all of us is that we must put much more pressure on our national governments to fund it under austerity. In Britain, they've slashed the budget for the marine management organization. Now imagine we have sea area 27 times the land area and we have precisely 12 Coast guard vessels that are allocated to monitoring and policing all that sea. This is a bad joke. And, and when, when an MP proposed an amendment to the fisheries bill in 2020 that there should be a ban on all industrial fishing in our marine protected areas, the government vetoed that. They vetoed that. So we don't have a serious commitment. We have a rhetorical commitment, but not a serious one. Our biggest marine protected area is Tristan da Cunha. It's 700,000 square kilometers. Do you think we have the capacity to monitor and police that area? It's just not a realistic thing, but they use the terms of marine protection. But really it's a fraudulent claim and I think we must expose that. And I'm very glad your program is doing that to a certain extent. But we must realize that most of the solutions to our sea area lies within our own jurisdiction, our political process, and so on. And we must put pressure on the politicians to be more serious about it.