If that happens, it will have been a long time coming. The negotiating process started 20 years ago and the treaty was adopted in 2023, but countries have been slow to ratify and at least 60 must do so for the treaty to come into force. With marine and coastal ecosystems facing multiple threats from climate change, fishing, and pollution, the treaty’s main aim is to establish marine protected areas in international waters, which make up around two thirds of the ocean.
But if getting 60 countries to ratify a treaty they already endorsed was hard, deciding which parts of the world’s international waters to protect from overfishing — and how — won’t be much easier.
“Make no mistake, like every other convention, there will be opposition,” Dale Webber, Jamaica’s special envoy for climate change, environment, ocean and blue economy, told POLITICO. “I already know of some countries who are fishing on the high seas who are saying, ‘You’re trying to limit my catch!’ but that’s exactly what we need to do.”
Off to a slow start
Some smaller and developing countries, as well as environmental groups, leave the conference feeling that the onus remains on them to protect the world’s oceans — despite grand words from French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the conference’s opening on Monday.
“Everybody needs to do more — specifically those countries that belong to the Western world,” Panamanian climate envoy Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez told POLITICO. “If you look at the 30 by 30 goal, it’s developing countries [who are] carrying the weight as of right now,” he added, in reference to a global goal to protect at least 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030.
French Polynesia stole the show this week, announcing the creation of the world’s largest Marine Protected Area, highly or fully protecting around 1.1 million square kilometers of its waters, teeming with tropical fish, sharks, rays, dolphins and 150 species of precious corals.
