Implementation of Existing International Legal Instruments for Conservation and Sustainable Uses of Marine Biodiversity in Areas beyond National Jurisdiction: A Case Study of the OSPAR Convention
The states of the world face the new challenge of attempting to prevent the global loss of marine biodiversity by protecting the 64% of the surface area of the oceans that lies beyond national jurisdiction. With this aim, various regional agreements have been negotiated to commit states to set up representative networks of marine protected areas (MPAs). The aim of this note is to explain how it was possible to designate six MPAs in the high sea under the OSPAR Convention and some of the challenges this process raised.
Securing a Sustainable Future for the Oceans Beyond National Jurisdiction: The Legal Basis for an Integrated Cross-Sectoral Regime for High Seas Governance for the 21st Century
The legal regime for the high seas is fragmented both sectorally and geographically and is incomplete. Governance, regulatory, substantive and implementational gaps in the legal framework serve to limit the effectiveness of the high seas regime in securing a sustainable future for the conservation and use of the high seas environment and its resources. A global approach to further developing the high seas regime based on the concept of international public trusteeship for the oceans beyond national jurisdiction could foster environmentally responsible use of the high seas and its resources and ensure the application of modern conservation principles and management tools to human activities on the high seas. In view of escalating threats to the oceans from existing and emerging uses and from the impacts of climate change, transformation to a legal regime better suited to integrated, cross-sectoral management and preservation of vital ocean ecosystem services and resilience may no longer be a luxury, but rather a necessity.
Fisheries: Deep-sea fishes qualify as endangered
Criteria from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) have been used to classify marine fish species as endangered since 1996, but deep-sea fish have not so far been evaluated — despite their vulnerability to aggressive deepwater fishing as a result of certain life-history traits. Here we use research-survey data to show that five species of deep-sea fish have declined over a 17-year period in the Canadian waters of the northwest Atlantic to such an extent that they meet the IUCN criteria for being critically endangered. Our results indicate that urgent action is needed for the sustainable management of deep-sea fisheries.