UN member states reach historic agreement on international waters

Nearly 10 years after talks began on protecting international bodies of water, United Nations member states on Saturday reached a historic agreement.

After 38 hours of negotiations, delegates to the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) agreed to place 30 percent of the world’s oceans into protected areas, allocate more money to marine conservation, and cap access to and use of genetic resources the sea

Before Saturday’s agreement, only 1.2 percent of this water was protected by an international agreement on ocean protection signed 40 years ago in 1982 – the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Countries can fish, navigate, research, and mine unchecked, which means that marine life in these waters is not protected.

This led to a global conversation and effort to protect these waters that began in 2004. The effort ran into several brick walls including disagreements over funding and fishing rights.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the ship has reached shore,” said Conference President Rena Lee as she announced the agreement to prolonged applause in the meeting room. Delegates will later gather again to formally adopt the text.

The agreement must be formally adopted at the next session, and then only “ratified” if enough countries have signed and ratified it in their own countries.

The UN applauds the move

“This action is a victory for multilateralism and for global efforts to combat the destructive trends facing the health of the oceans, now and for generations to come,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement issued by a spokesman.

Guterres added that the agreement is important to address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

“It is also important to achieve the ocean-related goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework,” said the statement, referring to the ’30 × 30′ pledge to protect a third of biodiversity in world – on land and sea – in 2030 was created by the historic UN conference in Montreal in December.

The conference, held from February 20 to March 4 at the UN Headquarters in New York, was attended by more than 400 delegates, representing governments, UN specialized agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academia.