Editorial | High seas agreement offers wave of hope

Negotiations dubbed “the most important talks no one has heard of” have suddenly grabbed attention with a breakthrough.

For 15 years the 190-odd members of the United Nations have struggled to agree on the text of an international treaty to protect the high seas. It matters because we depend on healthy oceans for half of the oxygen we breathe. The oceans are also the Earth’s largest carbon sink.

The “high seas” are the two-thirds of the world’s oceans that lie outside national boundaries and are essentially lawless. They are therefore unprotected from the increasing reach of shipping and fishing vessels, overfishing, deep-sea mining, pollution, climate change and exploitation of marine species.

The success of the latest round of talks – the fifth – was critical to a historical pledge by the UN biodiversity conference in December to protect 30 per cent of the oceans by 2030. Otherwise, no legal mechanism would exist for effective safeguarding of protected marine areas. This prompted UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to call on nations to stop squabbling and get the treaty done.

Activists hailed the high seas agreement as historic for conservation and a sign that protection of nature and people could triumph over geopolitics.