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Long spared
because of their remoteness, the high seas have become an important hunting
ground for fish trawlers and oil prospectors, putting at risk many marine
species that call these waters home.
The high
seas, where no national laws apply and international rules are often vague,
have become a “lawless zone” where prospectors operate “on a
first-come-first-served” basis, oceanographic and marine law experts lamented
at a conference in Monaco last week.
Policy
makers from 184 countries meeting in Hyderabad, India until Friday in a bid to
turn around the rate of biodiversity loss, will also examine ways to prevent
the international waters becoming a deep-sea Wild West.
“International
waters and seabeds are a vital part of the global ocean and planetary life
support system, producing much of the oxygen and storing both CO2 and heat,
[making] life on Earth habitable for us humans,” Kristina Gjerde, of the
International Union for Conservation of Nature, told AFP.
“They are
also of vast importance for supporting a wide range of marine life, from tiny
phytoplankton to blue whales, the largest creatures on our planet.”
The threats
are diverse.
With little
supervision, trawlers are indiscriminately scooping up unsustainable numbers of
fish, permanently harming species populations and damaging the ocean floor.
Alongside
oil prospecting ships, they also cause chemical and sound pollution, disrupting
species such as whales and dolphins that rely on sonar communication for
socializing, hunting and mating.
In
anticipation of global rules being adopted to better manage the exploitation of
deep-sea resources, an issue discussed at length but without resolution at the
Rio+20 environment summit in June, hopes are that the UN Convention on
Biodiversity meeting in India will adopt some safeguards.
Officials,
joined from Wednesday also by environmental ministers from more than 70
countries, were set to examine the findings of scientific reports that have
identified more than 120 marine biodiversity “hot spots.”
The reports
were compiled by regional study groups examining all the world’s oceans and
measuring different indicators of species vulnerability.
“It is
above all a scientific exercise aimed at cataloguing the zones to be
protected,” said Elisabeth Druel, marine law expert at the Institute for
Sustainable Development and International Relations.
Adoption of
the scientific reports would mark “a small procedural step, but a big one
politically”, added Jean-Patrick Le Duc, a member of the French delegation
negotiating in Hyderabad.
“It will
send a strong signal” in favour of the creation of protected marine areas on
the high seas, which now enjoy little protection.
The global
objective, adopted at the last CBD conference in Japan two years ago, is to
have 10 percent of marine and coastal areas under conservation by 2020 — up
from two percent today.
At
Hyderabad, certain countries, notably those with big fishing fleets such as
Japan, Norway, Iceland and Greece, are not keen to see constraints imposed,
observers have noted.
Daniela
Diz, responsible for marine policy at green group WWF, said endorsement of the
scientific reports was a necessary first step to the UN General Assembly
finally approving the creation of deep-see protected areas.
“The point
is that if the reports are not endorsed they won’t be included in the
repository or sent to relevant organizations, which means that all that
fantastic scientific information produced in the workshops would be lost.”
Agence France-Presse
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