What is the U.N. High Seas Treaty and How Will it Protect International Waters?

Almost half the world's population relies on our oceans for survival. The ocean supplies food, creates jobs, and supports livelihoods. It provides medicines, renewable energy, and mineral resources. It is essential for life, as it creates over 50% of the oxygen we breathe. But our oceans have been treated as human dumping grounds, and much of the marine life inhabiting them has been overfished to near extinction. We have damaged our reefs and underwater habitats with pollution, tourism, recreation, and commercial shipping. And until now, there has been little done to stop this.

When the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea was implemented back in 1994, biodiversity loss in our oceans wasn't understood as an issue. Now, nearly 30 years later, it's a problem we can't ignore any longer. While countries have their own regulations established to protect territorial waters, these only technically extend 12 nautical miles off the coast of each coastal country, with legal authority extending about 200 nautical miles. For anything past there, the rules get blurry. Technically, each vessel and its activities in international waters are governed by where the ship is registered. And with each country having different regulations, global collaboration has truly been necessary to make any widespread changes.

Global collaboration on any matter is challenging, which is why the United Nations has spent over two decades planning and negotiating how to make this treaty a reality. The almost 200 member states that make up the U.N. have met six times in the last five years to discuss how they could collectively monitor, study and protect international waters—finally coming to a conclusion on Saturday, March 4, 2023.

What's included in the U.N. High Seas Treaty?

So, what does this treaty actually say? The U.N. High Seas Treaty is broken down into many different sub-categories to address issues impacting the biodiversity of our oceans, climate change, and pollution. One of the most impactful aspects of the treaty is the plan to establish Marine Protected Areas to protect marine biodiversity. These zones will be monitored and managed to ensure that ocean ecosystems are not being depleted and all resources are used sustainably. It will also prevent overfishing and protect underwater species, habitats, and ecosystem functions.

The treaty also includes frameworks for more thorough assessments of deep-sea mining and other commercial activities to determine their potential damage. For any activities that are deemed sustainable, all involved parties of the treaty will share the resources. When it comes to the scientific exploration of international water, many of the developing nations of the U.N. don't have the technology or capital to do their own research. One of the biggest holdups from having this treaty implemented sooner was discussions over how countries would split the cost for marine exploration and how they'd split the profits for new discoveries. But in the end, differences were put aside with the shared goal of protecting the ocean, combating climate change, and protecting the livelihoods of the global population.

How will the U.N. enforce the regulations of the High Seas Treaty?

The most significant problem with any regulations put on international waters, in general, is that they cover over 60% of our oceans. That is why, up to this point, there has only been regulation on about 1% of international water activity. Policing these waters is a considerable challenge, and this will continue to be true even with 200 countries working together to enforce regulations. But we can anticipate the use of technology like satellite monitoring and increased investment in coastal security to help bolster the enforcement of this treaty.

The treaty itself doesn't immediately put Marine Protected Areas in place, but it's created a structure to start working from. They have already identified some high-risk areas they want to prioritize, including the Costa Rica Thermal Dome and the Sargasso Sea. This will all help in the fight against climate change and help to improve food security for the future.

There is hope for the future of our oceans

The approved U.N. High Seas Treaty is incredibly promising as, until now, international waters have been largely lawless with the inability to enforce the almost inexistent regulations implemented in the past. But now, with penalties for acts like illegal fishing, deep sea mining, and waste dumping being supported by over 200 countries, there's real promise for the success of this legal agreement. It's now up to member states of the United Nations to decide how they will adopt the treaty into domestic law and actually implement it. This will inevitably take years to be put into practice, but it's still a huge leap in the right direction. And it has shone a massive spotlight on the radical change needed to save and protect our oceans and created tangible solutions for getting there.

At ProShot and Tidal Sports we are incredibly passionate about protecting our beautiful oceans and all the marine life that live there so we can continue to consciously experience the underwater world. Find out more about our partnerships with Ocean Cleanup and Saving the Blue, and how a portion of all our sales go to supporting these incredible initiatives.