Coming together to protect Nature is a key element to making sure we have a future as a species and that other species not only survive but thrive in the coming decades and centuries.
This is why the United Nations have worked for almost 20 years on protecting the high seas, its biodiversity and providing oversight of international waters. Earlier this month, nations finally agreed on this and it’s hailed as an historical event. This is a critical step to putting aside 30 percent of our planet (both land and seas) and protect it by 2030.
With one third of our oceans being part of exclusive economic zones, the remaining parts are mainly a free for all and this is a classic case of tragedy of the commons with overfishing and many other issues being left unadressed but also worsened year after year.
As per Wikipedia, this new treaty ” will provide a legal framework for establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) in international waters to protect against the loss of wildlife. It also contains a procedure for managing returns from the genetic resources of the high seas.”
Let’s hope this new legal framework will have more impact than the one on climate change as the dozens of conferences of parties on the topic haven’t exactly solved the problem. I previously mentioned that there were no less than nine plagues threatening our oceans.
To learn out more on how the press reacted to this historical event, please check out The Guardian, the BBC or Nature.com
