The United Nations failed to finalise a landmark treaty to preserve the biodiversity of the high seas – the 60% of the ocean beyond any nation’s jurisdiction. Observers, though, expect an agreement to be reached by year’s end as pressure builds to protect marine life from the growing impacts of climate change, overfishing and pollution, reports Bloomberg.

The two-week meeting that concluded Friday at UN headquarters in New York City was the fourth round of negotiations since 2018, when the General Assembly approved the drafting of the treaty after years of preparatory talks. The meeting was originally to be held in 2020 and be the final session but the Covid-19 pandemic delayed in-person negotiations for two years.

The ocean treaty has been described as a  ‘once in a lifetime’ chance to protect the high seas and the Oceans’ Last Great Hope.  In the runup to the negotiations, Lord Goldsmith said that ‘The BBNJ Agreement will be an important step forward in ocean governance’ and highlighted that agreement would ‘be challenging in the time available’.

The clock ran out at UN talks, with no schedule set for prolonging the discussions. This fourth round of negotiations since 2018—preceded by a decade of preliminary talks—was meant to create vast marine reserves to prevent biodiversity loss, oversee industrial-scale fisheries and share out the “genetic resources” of the sea. As reported by PhysOrg, “We have not come to the end of our work,” said conference president Rena Lee, a diplomate from Singapore, noting that the COVID pandemic had caused major delays.

Prof Alex Rogers, quoted in the Guardian, said: “There are states here that are dragging their feet and deliberately prolonging the treaty [talks]. But we know the ocean is being degraded and is losing biodiversity. Climate is also having an impact on the ocean. The longer these negotiations are strung out, the more biodiversity we lose.”

In concluding the conference, the EU and its Member States called for a fifth and final session to take place in August 2022.