Hundreds of countries meet to discuss a UN treaty to protect the oceans

By David Stanway

SINGAPORE, Feb 20 (Reuters) – Delegations from hundreds of countries will meet in New York this week to hammer out a new legally binding treaty to protect the oceans that environmental groups say will decide the success of safeguard efforts of global biodiversity.

A previous round of talks on the new UN ocean conservation treaty was suspended last August after countries failed to reach an agreement on funding. Sharing the benefits of “marine genetic resources” and setting standards to assess the environmental impact of the oceans on development were also major sticking points.

Experts familiar with the negotiations said the main parties had addressed key issues at the start of the new talks, although compromises were still being sought.

“There now seems to be a drive to finalize the treaty,” said Jessica Battle, oceans expert at the World Wide Fund for Nature.

“There are several countries that want to make concessions, but at the end of the day the important thing is that the treaty is not watered down too much,” he said, noting that an attempt to exclude fishing from this treaty had already been rejected.

The success of the talks, which will last until March 3, “always depends on the financial issue”, said Li Shuo, global policy adviser at Greenpeace, and China is called upon to play a key role in the negotiations, in particular to attract other developing countries. countries.

According to Greenpeace, to achieve the goal of protecting 30% of the planet’s land and sea surface by 2030, known as “30 by 30”, 11 million square kilometers of ocean must be protected each year by the end of the decade.

China’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it was striving to reach “a high-quality agreement that takes conservation and sustainable use into account and can be generally accepted by the international community.”

The question of how to share the benefits of industrial development of the oceans, including the use of marine genetic resources in pharmaceutical and other industries, will also be a crucial factor for China, which is already home to six of the world’s top 10 companies that manage deep sea fleet fishing.

“Genetic resources and the question of funding will be the key elements,” Greenpeace’s Li said.

(Reporting by David Stanway; Spanish edited by Flora Gómez)