UN member states were still trying hard on Saturday, after a sleepless night, to overcome their divisions and deliver a treaty to protect the high seas, a fragile and vital treasure that covers nearly half of the planet.
After more than 15 years of informal and then formal discussions, the negotiators have already gone several hours past the new two weeks of talks in New York, the third “last” session in less than a year.
Between bursts of hope of finally crossing the finish line and worries of another failure, the negotiations have taken on the appearance of a roller coaster in recent days over the demands and compromises of various delegations.
After a sleepless night, the negotiators were still meeting behind closed doors on Saturday to resolve in particular the highly political issue of sharing any benefits from marine genetic resources harvested on the high seas.
“We still have a few issues to clarify, but we are making progress and delegations are showing flexibility,” conference chair Rena Lee said during a whirlwind plenary session around 1:30 a.m.
This chapter on genetic marine resources is absent from the latest updated draft text published overnight, which also still has dozens of parentheses, indicating points of disagreement.
But several sources close to the negotiations assured Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Saturday morning that the negotiations had since progressed.
“So close now,” New Zealand negotiator Victoria Hallum tweeted, noting that she had broken her record with more than 24 straight hours in talks.
Agreement, but not adoption
Even if compromises are found on all the issues still pending, the treaty cannot, in all cases, be formally adopted during this session, explained Rena Lee on Friday.
But it may be “finalized”, without the possibility of reopening discussions “on the merits”, before formal adoption “at a later date” when it has been scrutinized by the legal services and translated into the six official languages of the EU. ‘UN.
Even without formal adoption, it would be “a major step,” Veronica Frank of Greenpeace told AFP.
The high seas begin where the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of the States end, at a maximum of 200 nautical miles (370 km) from the coasts, and it is therefore not under the jurisdiction of any country.
Even though it represents more than 60% of the oceans and almost half of the surface of the planet, it has long been ignored in the environmental fight, in favor of coastal areas and emblematic species.
However, ocean ecosystems produce half of the oxygen we breathe, limit global warming by absorbing a large part of the CO2 emitted by human activities, and feed part of humanity.
But they are threatened by climate change, pollution of all kinds and overfishing.
North-South equity
Negotiations for the future treaty focused on several disputes: procedure for creating marine protected areas, methods for implementing environmental impact studies of activities planned on the high seas, and above all sharing of potential benefits from the resources genetic marines.
For many observers, this issue boils down to a matter of North-South equity. “Geopolitics”, comments Minna Epps, of the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUCN).
Developing countries are indeed worried about not being fully party to the treaty due to a lack of financial resources; and fear being deprived of their share of the commercialization cake of potential miraculous molecules discovered in these international waters.
With an announcement seen as a gesture to strengthen North-South confidence, the European Union pledged, in New York, 40 million euros to facilitate the ratification of the treaty and its initial implementation.
Beyond that, it pledged to devote more than 800 million euros to the protection of the oceans in general for 2023, during the “Our Ocean” conference which ended on Friday in Panama. Conference that saw total commitments of nearly $20 billion — including nearly $6 billion from the United States.
If agreed, it will remain to be seen whether the approved text will be strong enough, with the compromises made, to make it possible to effectively protect the oceans and to achieve the commitment made in December by all the governments of the world to protect 30 % of the earth’s land and oceans by 2030.
An almost impossible challenge without including the high seas, of which only about 1% is protected today.