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A half-planet-size gap in global governance is about to get plugged
A new treaty offers hope of curbing the destruction of the oceans.
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A boy looking at a thresher shark on the Yemeni island of Socotra, sometimes called the Galapagos Islands of the Indian Ocean for its rich biodiversity.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
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On land, humans’ desire to protect the richness of natural life is as old as Eden; in its modern guise, terrestrial conservation dates back to the founding in 1872 of America’s Yellowstone Park. In contrast, the desire to protect the seas’ biological diversity is more recent. More often, the ocean has been viewed as a place of plunder or pursuit: a giant global commons, a free-for-all for fishermen and the last frontier for mineral wealth. Besides in Antarctica, no global treaty has managed conservation in the high seas – less than 1 per cent of which are formally protected.
Yet protection of the ocean beyond countries’ national jurisdictions is about to take a big leap forward, when a new high-seas treaty,
