The aim of the talks was a new international agreement to protect the seas. That has not been achieved. What are the reasons for failure?
New York – A UN conference for a new treaty to protect the high seas ended in New York without a result. The countries of the world had actually wanted to agree on a globally binding treaty for the protection of the high seas for the first time at the two-week conference at the United Nations headquarters on the East River in Manhattan. There was progress, but no final agreement, according to participants after the end of the conference on Saturday night.
“This is unfortunate because the catastrophic state of the oceans is well known and is rapidly deteriorating,” said Fabienne McLellan, executive director of the marine conservation organization Oceancare. The environmental organization Greenpeace described the failure as “outrageous and sad”.
The aim of the agreement is to place biological diversity on the high seas under internationally binding protection. In the run-up to the negotiations, however, it had already been said that the talks would be difficult because the countries differed significantly in their positions. The main aim of the EU states was to determine the establishment of marine protection areas and environmental impact assessments of human activities in the future.
Two thirds of the world’s oceans belong to the high seas and are therefore largely unlawful. An agreement to protect the high seas has been negotiated for around 15 years, and there have been several conferences on the subject. A date for further negotiations was initially not set after the failure of the current meeting. dpa
