UNITED NATIONS: Countries that ratified a landmark treaty to protect the high seas on Monday set January 2027 as the proposed date for their first summit, known as a conference of the parties.
After years of delays, the treaty was ratified in September by 60 countries. The law aims to protect biodiverse areas in international waters, beyond countries’ exclusive economic zones.
Belizean diplomat Janine Coye-Felson, co-chair of the committee working on implementing the treaty, said the group would recommend “that the first meeting of the COP be convened from 11 to 22nd January 2027 at UN Headquarters” in New York city.
The preparatory committee is holding its final meeting in New York to lay the groundwork for January’s summit, where operating rules and the location of a new secretariat must be decided.
The treaty, adopted in June 2023, aims to counter the myriad threats facing the world’s high seas, including climate change, pollution and overfishing.
Teeming with life, the oceans are responsible for creating half of the globe’s oxygen supply and are vital to combatting global warming because they absorb significant amounts of the CO2 emitted by human activities, conservationists say.
The high seas begin where a country’s exclusive economic zone ends — up to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the coast — and fall outside the jurisdiction of any single nation.
Although they cover nearly half the planet, the high seas have been long overlooked in the fight to preserve the environment.
Today only about one percent of the high seas is subject to conservation measures. In 2022 at the COP15 biodiversity conference, the world’s nations committed to protect 30 percent of global lands and oceans by the year 2030.
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