After years of negotiations, the UN member states have agreed on the text for the first international high seas agreement for the protection of the world's oceans. "The ship has reached shore," said the head of the UN conference, Rena Lee, on Saturday evening at the United Nations headquarters in New York to the applause of the delegates. The UN member states had been struggling in vain for more than 15 years to reach an agreement on the protection of biodiversity in the high seas, and it was only in August that a round of negotiations ended without result.
The text, on which the delegates agreed after two weeks of intensive talks, can no longer be significantly changed, according to conference chair Lee. "There will be no resumption or substantive discussions," Lee told negotiators. The agreement should be formally adopted as soon as it has been reviewed by lawyers and translated into the six official languages of the United Nations, Lee announced.
The high seas are about 60 percent of the world's oceans that do not fall under the exclusive economic zone of a state because they are further than 370 kilometers from the nearest coast. Currently, only about one percent of the high seas are protected by international agreements.
Environmental organizations are pushing for better protection of the world's oceans in the face of the dangers of global warming, pollution and overfishing. The oceans produce half of the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere and absorb a significant portion of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities.