Guardian Robin McKie ‘Wildlife in most of the lawless high seas faces an existential threat from fishing, shipping and the military. Next month, a landmark UN conference could finally bring hope. “Outside national waters, in the high seas, it is essentially a no man’s land when it comes to protecting sensitive environments and their inhabitants,” says Paul Snelgrove, a deep-sea biologist at Memorial University in St John’s, Canada. “It is a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs.” This lack of protection has increasingly vexed conservationists who for more than a decade have been urging that global action must be taken to protect the biodiversity of the high seas. This pressure has now produced an international response. Next month a major conference, organised by the United Nations, will be held in New York in a bid to get governments to agree measures to protect the high seas before their biodiversity is irreparably damaged. This will be followed by other meetings aimed at creating a treaty that would control and protect wildlife by 2020.
“These negotiations represent the greatest opportunity in history to decide the future of our oceans,” said Sandra Schöttner of Greenpeace’s Global Oceans campaign. “The life of our seas – from dolphins and turtles to blue whales – depends on the outcome of the next two years of discussions. Governments now have an opportunity to deliver a treaty that will allow us to protect oceans for the first time.” Click here to read more
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