While locally we are engrossed in electoral fever and the international scene is dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the curtain will rise next week on a highly-significant meeting at the United Nations in New York: the IGC4 of the BBNJ process.
This meeting is set to discuss the future of 40 per cent of planet earth, which represents that part of the ocean which does not fall under any national jurisdiction and where human activities are largely unregulated.
This part of the ocean is referred to through yet another mouthful – the ABNJ, or Area Beyond National Jurisdiction – known informally as the High Seas (water column) and ‘The Area’ (the seabed), extending beyond all national maritime designations and jurisdictions, including exclusive economic zones (EEZs).
The sheer extent of the High Seas is overwhelming, having been estimated at a whopping 271.7 million square kilometres, which equates to the combined surface area of Russia and the US 10 times over.
It is inconceivable that, 40 years since the ratification of the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), which basically established the baseline framework for managing the ocean’s ‘commons’, the living and non-living resources within such a vast swathe of the planet are still not managed through a rigorous rule-book.
The provisions laid down in UNCLOS 40 years ago, in fact, do not safeguard the integrity of biodiversity enclosed within the ABNJ (dubbed the ‘BBNJ’), nor do they regulate effectively human activities being conducted in such backwaters.
Through a UN resolution approved on Christmas Eve, 2017, the BBNJ Conference process was launched, with three Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs) being held over the 2018-2019 period. COVID stalled the process and, after a three-year hiatus, IGC4 should be held between March 7 and 14.
Putting it bluntly, no one felt the need to stipulate watertight measures about these issues for the High Seas 40 years ago, at a time when the exploitation of seabed resources lying hundreds and thousands of metres below the waves and hundreds of kilometres from dry land was deemed unachievable; so much so that the biodiversity, including deep-sea species, many of which still await discovery and which have never been subjected to any form of human disturbance within ‘The Area’, fall within the ‘Common Heritage of Mankind’ provisions of the UNCLOS and are not safeguarded.
But the technological state-of-the-art has definitely caught up, so much so that seabed mining is now looming on the horizon ever so inexorably. The pressure is piling on the International Seabed Authority (ISA), based in Jamaica, to approve the rule-book (Environmental Impact Assessment protocols to follow), sanctioning the exploitation of the seabed, as countries seek to capitalise on the resources locked away within their seabed.
Seabed mining is now looming on the horizon
Nauru, for instance, triggered, on June 29, 2021, the ‘nuclear option’, as it is informally known within ocean governance circles, by invoking the two-year rule. In essence, this means that the ISA has two years to finalise the seabed mining rule-book, which has been in the offing since 2011, or else exploitation can proceed by applying the rule-book in hand at the time, despite not being finalised.
And the irony of it all is that this rat-race to tap into the unlocked potential of the seabed located within the High Seas is being fuelled by the surge in interest in electric cars. In fact, the demand for the rare and precious metals, pivotal for the manufacture of electric car batteries, can only be met through the mining of the polymetallic nodules concentrated in some parts of the global ocean seabed.
DeepGreen, the Canadian company contracted by Nauru, Kiribati and Tonga to mine, as from June 2023, one-quarter of a million square kilometres (equivalent to the size of Romania) within the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean, argues that seabed mining has a lower environmental impact than mining on land and is fundamental for our green transition.
So are we to assume that the much-touted green transition simply hinges on generating an environmental catastrophe at the bottom of the ocean, a catastrophe which should not raise many hackles given that it will occur in areas beyond sight and will be difficult to document?
But while seabed mining is yet to get off the starting blocks, the exploitation of living resources has started in earnest. A diverse array of Biologically Active Molecules (BAMs) is extracted from a suite of deep-sea species, including sponges, sea cucumbers and coral, with applications in the treatment of cancer, inflammation and in pain relief, as well as nutritional supplements.
Europe is not twiddling with its fingers against such a sobering backdrop. The One Ocean summit held last month in Brest saw the adoption of the High Ambition Coalition on BBNJ, which should spearhead the sealing of an effective High Seas Treaty in 2022. Citing the declaration signed by European heads of governments at the same summit: ‘‘We recognise it is important to better steward marine areas beyond national jurisdiction, which comprise 95 per cent of the ocean and provide invaluable ecological, economic, social, cultural, scientific and food-security benefits to humanity.
“We, therefore, urge states to reach agreement and conclude in 2022, year of the 40th anniversary of the UNCLOS, the international legally binding treaty under the UNCLOS for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (‘BBNJ Treaty’).
“We also recognise the contribution of such BBNJ Treaty to the protection by 2030 of at least 30 per cent of the ocean and seas through an ecologically representative, well connected network including of highly and fully protected marine areas and area-based management tools.”
Lofty words indeed. On the 40th anniversary of the UNCLOS, will the world rise above the current distractions to protect 40 per cent of the planet?
Alan Deidun is Malta’s Ocean Governance Ambassador, who, along with staff at Malta’s Permanent Representation to the UN (PRUN), will follow proceedings of the IGC4 from March 7-14, 2022.