The Law of the High Seas

After more than five years of negotiations, UN state members agreed at the end of 2017 to draw up a new rulebook by 2020, which will establish conservation areas, catch quotas and scientific monitoring in terms of an internationally binding treaty to protect and regulate the High Seas. 

The waters outside national maritime boundaries – which cover half of the planet’s surface – are currently a free-for-all that has led to devastating overfishing and pollution.

The 2017 UN vote was supported by 140 nations, which is more than the two-thirds needed for passage to authorise the commencement of substantive negotiations on the text for a Law of the High Seas Treaty. The conclusion of a High Seas Treaty would mark the most significant development of oceans management since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas in December 1982. The UN will now host four meetings over the next two years to draft a legally binding treaty. 

Only 3.5% of the world’s oceans are currently protected. The remainder is increasingly over-exploited and contaminated by pollution, fishing and seabed mining. However, rapidly increasing global public concerns about the ongoing mismanagement of marine ecosystems, the pollution of seas and the threat of damaging seabed mining have focussed a majority of governments and politicians into accepting that the High Seas can no longer be left unmanaged and its resources unregulated. 

The next 2 years will be crucial to negotiating the extent and parameters of the treaty, particularly issues pertaining to regulation, access, management and utilisation of High Seas resources and pertinently the monitoring and surveillance of treaty obligations. As there will certainly not be a "United Nations Navy" deployed to protect the vast High Seas, the success of any international High Seas treaty will substantially depend on wealthy nations, particularly those with substantial naval resources (such as Russia, the United States and China) to assist with High Seas MCS. However, the mandatory electronic tracking of all fishing vessels, reefers and supply ships will assist in the global monitoring of fishing activity and reduce the impossible obligation of physical naval deployments across the High Seas.

And of course, the effective and global implementation of the Port State Measures Agreement will be key to the substantial curtailment of IUU fishing by denying rogue vessels (including supply vessels) and their IUU catches access to markets.