UN High Seas Treaty

Genesi di un accordo storico

  Articoli (Articles)
  Matteo Gabutti
  19 March 2023
  11 minutes, 23 seconds

Good evening – …-ish –, ladies and gentlemen. The ship has reached the shore.

– Rena Lee, President of the Intergovernmental Conference, 4th March 2023

It was no more evening when Rena Lee took the microphone in the United Nations headquarters in New York. The deadline to reach a draft of the UN High Seas Treaty was long over. Beside many being awake for 36 hours, 139 UN Member States delegates still hang on for other thirty minutes, obtained in extremis. Then Lee went back to the stage and pronounced those few words that sent a potentially revolutionary agreement to history. The announcement was welcome by liberating applauses, while Singapore diplomat shed her face crossed by tears of joy and tiredness.

We have a victory flag at the end of the fifth (bis) meeting of the Intergovernamental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, better known as BBNJ. After almost twenty years of discussions inside the United Nations, we finally have a draft of the text that, once looked through and translated, will be open to be referred to as High Seas Treaty. This international agreement would regulate an area yet ignored, with potentially significative consequences on the economic and environmental level. In this article, we will try to shed a light on the BBNJ’s turbulent journey and the next one will be on what it contains and its ecological impact.

A-decade genesis

Since 2004 the UN is aiming at a regulation of one of the last borders of international law’s wild west areas. Besides their dimensions, international waters play a little role in the United Nation’s Convention on Marine Law (UNCLOS), that essentially declares them open for every State to claim liberties, among which navigation, fishing and scientific research. Nothing is said about preservation and management of living and non-living resources. Therefore, the sea is open to the “res communes tragedy”: being they theoretically of everyone, no one cares about them.

About this, since 2006, the UN ad hoc work group recommended establishing an exhaustive and binding legal regime on safeguard and use of marine biological diversity on waters beyond shore countries’ jurisdiction – which is up to 200 nautical miles from coast, and extendible when in presence of a continental platform. A first doable answer came only with the 2017 Report of a Preparatory Commitee established two years before by the UN General Assembly. So, on same year’ Christmas Eve, the Assembly called for an Intergovernmental Conference (BBNJ), that from 2018 to 2022 met for five bisemabal sessions, the latest last August. Then it was suspended until the last meeting from 20th February to 3rd March 2023. I would then take a day more to reach what UN Secretary General António Guterres defined a true breakthrough.


Why so much time?

According to Gabriele Crescente, environnement editor in Internazionale, since the beginning of Marine Law, “international waters have been out of any safeguard”. A reason could be that they were little known and, until relative recent times, they were largely inaccessible. On the other hand, given to technological progress on seabed resource extractions, open sea is now a literally oceanic economic activity industry, and a battlefield for divergent interests.

The first contrast is about fishing, free from territorial waters limitations. On this, a study by the University of California revealed billion-dollar harmful annual subsidiaries allow a small number of Nations to take advantage of international waters fishing resources. Combined, the five most involved governments would spend 3.5 billion dollars on long distance fishing, yearly, and their vessels would operate more than 5 billion hours counted together (624 years). China leads the chart (1.7 billion), followed by Japan, Taiwan, south Korea and European Union (240 millions). It is not a paradox to think that current anomy and absence of rules benefit those five entities.

Another dispute is about oceans’ genetic resources exploitation for pharmaceutical, cosmetic or food industries. Until now only developed countries have been able to profit from it, little disposed to share with developing nations asking for a more equal distribution. More in general, these two decades of negotiations has been a clash between the so-called Global North and South. So, one of the hardest compromises reached since the agreement is aligning the “liberty of open sea” principle supported by industrialized nations (in favor of the status quo where each behaves according to its interests and possibilities), to “human heritage” principle, proposed by developing countries. This would subject open sea to common property and collective interests.

Lastly, the debate on finance, highlighted by tensions and abstension of some Global South countries at Cop15 in Montreal last December. Poorest countries want more funds for their ecological efforts by richer countries, while these are not enthusiastic about giving more donations to countries labelled as developing beside their robust economic growth, like China, India, Brazil. In this sense, the New York Conference distinguished itself for the Global North acknowledging their accountability towards the Global South. To solve this issue, the EU promised 40 million Euros to ease High Seas Treaty ratification and implementation and over 800 million Euros by end of the year to protect oceans in general. Moreover, the summit would produce 341 new commitments for a value of 18 million Euros, almost 5 of which coming from United States alone. This way, BBNJ reached the goal of getting 193 nations to agree on a text, on the pillars of universal and implementable rules, as Rena Lee wanted. What this text says and its range is to be discussed in the next article.

By Matteo Gabutti and Alessia Pagano


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L'Autore

Matteo Gabutti

IT

Matteo Gabutti è uno studente classe 2000 originario della provincia di Torino. Nel capoluogo piemontese ha frequentato il Liceo classico Massimo D'Azeglio, per poi conseguire anche il diploma di scuola superiore statunitense presso la prestigiosa Phillips Academy di Andover (Massachusetts). Dopo aver conseguito la laurea in International Relations and Diplomatic Affairs presso l'Università di Bologna, al momento sta conseguendo il master in International Governance and Diplomacy offerto alla Paris School of International Affairs di SciencesPo. All'interno di Mondo Internazionale ricopre il ruolo di autore per l'area tematica Legge e Società, oltre a contribuire frequentemente alla stesura di articoli per il periodico geopolitico Kosmos.

EN

Matteo Gabutti is a graduate student born in 2000 in the province of Turin. In the Piedmont capital he has attended Liceo Massimo D'Azeglio, a secondary school specializing in classical studies, after which he also graduated from Phillips Academy Andover (MA), one of the most prestigious preparatory schools in the U.S. After his bachelor's in International Relations and Diplomatic Affairs at the University of Bologna, he is currently pursuing a master's in International Governance and Diplomacy at SciencesPo's Paris School of International Affaris. He works with Mondo Internazionale as an author for the thematic area of Law and Society, and he is a frequent contributor for the geopolitical journal Kosmos.

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trattato sull'alto mare UnitedNations InternationalLaw Mare LawOfTheSea UNCLOS Unione Europea Cina Stati Uniti risorse genetiche Governance