On Sunday, UN members have jointly agreed to protect the marine biodiversity in international waters and to work out a common framework to set up new protected areas on high seas, winding up a week of talks in New York.
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On Sunday, UN delegations have reached a milestone deal to safeguard and protect the vast stretches of marine biodiversity of the planet by setting up protected areas on high seas. The talks will assist to protect the wildlife on high seas which lie far from national waters and sum up two-third of the world’s ocean surface. The member nations have been keenly making efforts to reconcile the ocean treaty talks for almost a decade for a better marine future.
Charter prepared by Nations to conserve Marine Biodiversity
Ecological espousing groups announced the finalized document, which still needs to be approved by the United Nations. Only an insignificant percentage of the high seas are presently environmentally safeguarded, exposing the massive variety of marine species from minute plankton to huge whales that survive beneath the Ocean’s surface, to threats such as pollution, over-fishing, oil spills, shipping and deep-sea mining.
Once the convention takes legal effect and is formally negotiated and accepted by the member nations, countries can begin proposing the setting up of new marine protected regions in the international waters. Unfortunately, there are chances that the implementation of the new marine laws in the international waters will still be a challenge due to unavoidable, severe and ignorant human activities.
Inefficiencies of the previous ocean agreements
“A significant percentage of the entire amount of ocean contained on earth’s surface is majorly prone to all adverse disastrous human activity and immense pollution,” said Mrs. Hubbard, the executive of the High Seas Alliance, a consortium of nongovernmental organizations that took part in the talks, in a conversation interview on weekend. “It was a herculean task to preserve and safeguard the marine wildlife beyond the territorial waters of the nations.” she said. “These talks are perfectly a phenomenal achievement.”
The Ocean treaty dialogue is a relevant event as it triggers the sincere efforts made to conserve the wildlife that survives on the high seas as the pressures on the globe’s oceans increase. Climate change is an extremely disastrous phenomenon that is making the oceans less habitable for a variety of species by spiking up aquatic temperatures and making the ocean waters more acidic in nature. The World trade severely affects marine life as colossal ships and huge submarines have greater chances of striking whales and other animals near the surface, endangering their health.
Consistent depletion of marine resources by nations
The requirement of precious and useful minerals for building infrastructure will drive renowned commercial organizations to mine and thereby endangering marine biodiversity. Furthermore, the depletion of the marine ecosystem hampers its ability to trap carbon and helps in mitigating the factors that can cause climate change. The fruitful ocean talks also provide a way to segregate the profits accumulated from deep-sea scientific expeditions.
“This decision will make multilateralism and sincere efforts to tackle the detrimental trends facing ocean health more fruitful, now and for years to come,” Stéphane Dujarric, statesman for the U.N. secretary-general, said in a statement after the convention. “The potential threats like the world crisis of climate change, loss of biodiversity and severe oceanic pollution will be significantly addressed through these unified talks.”
U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea
The newly drafted acceptance is the first and foremost of its kind to safeguard ocean waters since 1982, when the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea was enacted, framing a set of rules and regulations that administered the waters around the globe and their resources.
The convention’s final draft has not yet been published in full as of Sunday, but according to the State Department, it also entrenches the frameworks for countries to synchronize on environmental impact assessments and to share marine genetic resources and scientific knowledge about deep-sea species found in remote waters that could be of value to humankind. One of the biggest sticking points in negotiations between rich and poor nations was determining who would benefit financially from discoveries made on the high seas.
Conclusion
Marine biodiversity and a wide variety of resources deep within the waters are the life-sustaining essentials for mankind. Nations should harmoniously come forward to table their concerns and reach a consensus to sustain the lives of future generations. A Copious amount of oceanic pollution is deeply impacting the assets of marine wildlife and thereby causing adverse effects on humans. Stringent laws should be made to mandate preservation, protection and safeguarding the beauties of marine life.
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