The High Seas Treaty: An Essential Piece of the 30x30 Puzzle

By Grace Reville, Regional Lead of United States and High Seas Engagements

The high seas are the earth’s global commons. Beginning 200 nautical miles from every shoreline, these international waters belong to every country on the planet, even those with no coastline, and they alone encompass almost half of the world’s surface area. Despite being far from shore, the high seas are home to a diversity of ecosystems and abundant biodiversity, ranging from oxygen-producing plankton to whales, sharks, and commercially important species of fish, like tuna.

However, management of this vast space is complicated and the existing governance patchwork has resulted in only ~1% of the high seas being protected. But the pressure is on for the world to improve its approach to the conservation of this ocean space. 

In December 2022, 196 countries convened for the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity’s 15th meeting and united to adopt a new global agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Aimed at safeguarding our planet’s precious and highly threatened biodiversity, the Framework includes a commitment to protect and conserve at least 30% of our planet’s land and ocean areas by 2030, also known as “30x30”.

For the ocean, achieving 30x30 will mean more than tripling the extent of current marine protections in less than eight years. Scientists and other ocean community members agree that reaching this ambitious target will be impossible without a mechanism to advance protections on the high seas.

Right now, delegates from around the world are meeting at the UN headquarters in New York for what is hopefully the final negotiating conference for a historic high seas treaty. While the text has yet to be finalized, the agreement would include the ability to facilitate the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs) on the high seas and guide decision-makers on how to assess the environmental impacts of human activities in these areas. Initial discussions around the high seas treaty date back to informal meetings at the UN in 2004 and it officially entered the negotiations phase in 2017. Completion of the agreement this week would mark a momentous opportunity for the conservation of our global oceans, one that is nearly two decades in the making.

But implementation of this ambitious goal will take ambitious action at all levels of government. Countries must act with urgency to finalize a high seas treaty now in order to establish high seas MPAs in service to the 30x30 target. The Blue Nature Alliance along with several other funders is committed to supporting countries in seeing this process through.

Together we can work to halt and reverse the unprecedented loss of biodiversity and associated impacts to human well-being at a global scale.