Oceans as a solution to the climate crisis: The final United Nations Agreement on Biological Diversity and Conservation Laws (Extended Abstract)

Our work as nature scientists and wildlife photographers, as well as our tenures as assignment photographers for National Geographic and as founders of the ocean conservation organization SeaLegacy, has given us a first-hand perspective of humanity’s adverse effects on the oceans. This vantage point also gives us access to some of the world’s leading scientists, political leaders and economists, who agree that the ocean has a significant role in mitigating and solving the climate crisis. Their knowledge and perspective can fill us with a feeling of optimism.

Through its protective role, the ocean absorbs 25% of the CO2 humanity has released into the atmosphere and 93% of the excess heat trapped in the biosphere. A healthy ocean can do a lot more.

A year ago, Dr Carlos Duarte was on the leading edge of blue natural solutions, which includes the insight into the unique powers of marine ecosystems to decarbonize the atmosphere. He showed that the ocean holds 16 times more carbon than the world’s vegetation.

The World Economic Forum says that global demand for carbon credits is projected to increase 15-fold by 2030 and be worth up to $50 billion by 2030, and that blue carbon will make up a significant portion of that.

The outlook is not good. There are unresolved issues in the text of the draft. National negotiators have not made enough progress in the final round of talks prior to the start of the summit, according to Elizabeth Mrema, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. She urged them to compromise if they want to reach a deal. The world is in crisis, according to Mrema. This is our final chance to act.

After nearly two decades of planning and negotiations, members of the United Nations have agreed on an international treaty to protect biodiversity in international waters, which cover nearly two-thirds of the ocean.

Most of theat-risk groups are the amphibians and corals. The critically important bleeding toad (Leptophryne cruentata), which is found in Mount Gede Pangrambo National Park in Java, Indonesia, is among more than 40% of Amphibians Threatened with extinction according to a global assessment.

Some toads were spotted in 2000 by a team led by herpetologist Mirza Kusrini at a college in Indonesia. The research team found that the amphibians were being affected by chytrid. The tiny toad is known for its red paint-like spots, and Kusrini thinks climate change is making life hard for it. Warm weather can stimulate fungal outbreaks and shift the timing of behaviours, such as the toads’ breeding season, making the amphibians vulnerable.

How Does Nature Predict the Future of a Low Biodiversity Ecosystem? Comment on Naeem’s Theoretical Model

It’s difficult to predict because you need to know which species is present in the rainforest, and what their functions are. Information about it is often unknown. It has been shown that the ability of ecosystems to capture and convert resources into biomass is not the same as it is for them to have less biodiversity.

Neither are less-diverse ecosystems as good at decomposing and recycling biological materials and nutrients. For example, studies show that dead organisms are broken down, and their nutrients recycled, more quickly when a high variety of plant litter covers the forest floor4. Naeem says that if a fire were to occur, it would be difficult for a low biodiversity system to bounce back.

“If we lose parts of our system, it simply won’t function very efficiently, and it won’t be very robust,” he adds. “The science behind that is rock solid.”

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04370-4

The Impact of Biodiversity Loss on the Environment: A Declaration on the Status of the Sustainable Development Goals of Central America and the Action of the Nature Conservancy

Ecosystems also provide clean water and can sometimes prevent diseases from spreading to humans. These services degrade when species are lost. Many insects are considered pests, such as cockroaches, and the majority of salamanders eat insects. Studies have shown a rise in cases of malaria — spread by mosquitoes — in areas in Central America where amphibian populations have collapsed5. “You know when they disappear”, Kusrini says, because insect numbers rise and people start using more pesticides to kill them.

The draft of the framework calls for halving the introduction of species that are not native to the area. More than half of the extinctions of birds, mammals and reptiles have been caused by non-native animals.

It is important that countries agree on a framework with quantifiable targets so that progress can be measured and countries can be held responsible if they fail to meet targets, researchers say. Pimm fears that they are going to produce a long list of waffle. We need to quantify things.

The newly adopted framework says protected areas should be created “recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.”

Some human rights advocates don’t believe that the 30×30 target is a big green lie. “It’s a huge land grab that’ll force millions of #Indigenous peoples off their ancestral lands,” nongovernmental organization Survival International posted on Facebook over the weekend.

Nevertheless, large conservation groups celebrated the adoption of the new framework. “If more people grasped the pace, severity and long-term implications of biodiversity loss, the eyes of the world might have been focused on Montreal rather than Qatar over these two weeks,” Andrew Deutz, a director at the nonprofit The Nature Conservancy, said in a statement referencing the FIFA World Cup that coincided with the UN Biodiversity Conference.

The task of making progress on the ground is even harder now that the framework has been established, because of the harms committed in the past.

“To return to World Cup metaphors – it really did feel like a championship game heading into extra time in knife-edge fashion,” Deutz said. The next phase of hard work already beckons for the global biodiversity community.

High Seas: A second chance for the ocean, and the need for a new high seas treaty in Washington, D.C.

United Nations members gather Monday in New York to resume efforts to forge a long-awaited and elusive treaty to safeguard the world’s marine biodiversity.

Countries have jurisdiction over the waters that extend 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from their shores. Beyond that are the high seas, which make up about two-thirds of the global ocean, or more than 70% of Earth’s surface. There are mechanisms that allow for the regulation of certain activities in these waters, such as whaling and seabed mining. The high seas have long been considered the wild west of the ocean with few rules and regulations.

Boris Worm, a marine Biologist at Canada’s Dalhousie University, said the ocean is the life support system of our planet. We did not feel like we had much impact on the high seas for a long time. He said expansion of deep sea fishing, mining, plastic pollution, and climate change have changed that notion.

The treaty provides legal tools to establish and manage marine protected areas – sanctuaries to protect the ocean’s biodiversity. It covers environmental assessments for potential damage of commercial activities before they start and pledges to share ocean resources.

According to Nichola Clark, an oceans expert who follows the negotiations for a nonpartisan center in D.C., this is the largest global commons. “We are optimistic that this upcoming round of negotiations will be the one to get a treaty over the finish line.”

After years of debates and discussions, nations have agreed on a High Seas Treaty to protect marine biodiversity and provide oversight of international waters. It is being praised by researchers as an important step in encouraging international research collaboration without interfering with science.

Nearly 200 countries have agreed to a legally-binding treaty to protect marine life in international waters, which cover around half of the planet’s surface, but have long been essentially lawless.

“We need a legally binding framework that can enable countries to work together to actually achieve these goals they’ve agreed to,” said Jessica Battle, an expert on oceans governance at World Wide Fund for Nature

“I think that this treaty is a second chance for the ocean, because AIDA is focused on protecting the environment here in Latin America,” said Gladys, the executive director of AIDA.

The small Pacific and Caribbean island countries are very vulnerable to ocean issues, such as pollution and climate change, because they lack the money or resources to tackle them, according to a lawyer from Samoa.

The unification agreement on the protection of marine life in the areas outside national boundary waters signed at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Saturday evening

“Getting the traditional knowledge of local people and communities recognized as valid” is also essential to protect both ecosystems and the ways of life of Indigenous groups, she said.

The talks are important, as nearly half of the planet’s surface is covered by high seas, according to the executive director of the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense.

The agreement was signed on Saturday evening after two weeks of negotiations at the United Nations headquarters in New York ended in a mammoth final session of more than 36 hours – but it has been two decades in the making.

Laura Meller from the oceans campaign at Greenpeace said that this was a historic day for conservativism, and that people could triumph over politics in a divided world.

The race to harness the ocean’s “genetic resources” is adding pressure, as are the Industrial fishing, shipping, and deep sea mining industries.

“Currently, there are no comprehensive regulations for the protections of marine life in this area,” Liz Karan, oceans project director at the Pew Charitable Trusts, told CNN.

There are huge gaps between the pieces. The professor of ocean science at theUniversity of California Santa Barbara said that it is truly that bad.

There were times when some people were concerned that an agreement wouldn’t be achieved as conflicts threatened to derail the talks. “It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride,” said Karan.

Securing costs and benefits shared equitably, as many developing countries may not have the technology or capacity to do their own scientific exploration of the high seas was one of the major sticking points.

An updated framework to protect marine life in the regions outside national boundary waters, known as the high seas, had been in discussions for more than 20 years, but previous efforts to reach an agreement had repeatedly stalled. The unified agreement treaty was reached late Saturday.

For any activities on the high seas that are expected to have a substantial effect, the treaty also calls for environmental-impact assessments. Nations will be charged with approving activities after reviewing the assessments. Cymie Payne, an environmental-governance specialist at Rutgers University, says that most scientific projects wouldn’t require such evaluations. She says the assessments will provide a central source of information about ocean activities.

Many marine species make annual migrations across national borders and the high seas. Efforts to protect them — and human communities that rely on fishing or tourism related to marine life — have previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws.

Battle said that the treaty will help knit together different regional treaties to address threats and concerns across species’ ranges.

Ocean Environment in Latin America: Working together to protect fish, rays, chimaera, and other ocean ecosystems, as discussed by Mendenhall and De Lemos

Gladys De Lemos is the executive director of the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, focused on environmental issues across Latin America.

She said the government made an important step that strengthens legal protection for two-thirds of the ocean and with it marine flora and fauna.

Commercial fishing operations in the ocean have been detrimental to species. According to the World Wildlife Fund, more than a third of all sharks, rays and a shark-like fish called chimaera are at risk of extinction because of overfishing.

“There was no way to coordinate between these kinds of organizations,” said Elizabeth Mendenhall, a marine affairs professor at the University of Rhode Island who researches ocean governance.

“So areas get overburdened, overexploited, they get more than they can handle because there isn’t like a coordinated, holistic perspective,” she added.

Another issue is that there is no international body committed to preserving biological diversity in regions outside territorial seas or ground rules on accessing genetic resources found in international waters, Mendenhall said.

A scientific and technical body is one of the groups that was created by the treaty. It also emphasizes capacity building for research in lower-income nations, to ensure equitable access to science and to benefits from ocean discoveries.

According to Speer, who was part of the U.N. negotiating team, ensuring those resources will be shared in a fair and equitable way was a major point of tension in the negotiations.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and standards for ocean environmental impacts on commercial research: A case study in Trinidad and Tobago

The treaty aims at making research more accessible and inclusive for developing countries.

A fourth major component of the agreement is setting global standards for environmental impact assessments on commercial activities in the ocean. Cumulative impact and/or combined and incremental impacts are also considered in these evaluations.

Speer from the NRDC said that implementing the treaty is not only crucial for the waters outside national jurisdictions, but also for the regions and countries within it.

Billions of people rely on the ocean for their basic needs, such as food, jobs and income, which makes it important.

For example, the U.S. has yet to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was the last international treaty on ocean protection signed over 40 years ago.

“As a Caribbean scientist, I am extremely pleased” with this aspect of the treaty, says Judith Gobin, a marine ecologist at the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, in Trinidad and Tobago. “For too long we have watched research ships passing in the night, taking our marine organisms away.” Now, she says, “we will be truly involved.”

It is proposed that the scientists addBBNJ standardized batches to genetic data and biological samples collected from ocean life and notify a clearing house of where those data are published one year after collection. The identifier will be attached to any patents or sales of marketed products that come from the original research. For researchers, “you’ll just have another number to attach to your spreadsheet”, Jaspars says, adding that most of the logistical burden of benefit sharing will instead land on those developing commercial applications.