{"id":48195,"date":"2023-03-10T14:17:44","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T14:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/?p=48195"},"modified":"2023-03-10T14:43:54","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T14:43:54","slug":"its-high-time-for-the-high-seas-climate-weekly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/2023\/03\/10\/its-high-time-for-the-high-seas-climate-weekly\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s high time for the high seas – Climate Weekly"},"content":{"rendered":"

After almost 20 years of talks, the gavel fell on a new international treaty to protect the world’s oceans that lie outside national jurisdictions.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Countries agreed on a legal framework for governing those remote parts of the oceans, where, far from sight, human activities have often gone unchecked.<\/p>\n

Once formally adopted, the treaty will form the basis for the creation of marine protected areas and help reach a goal to protect 30% of the seas by 2030.<\/p>\n

That’s all good news albeit the fact environmentally risky deep sea mining, which is governed by its own UN body, will be exempt<\/a> from the treaty\u2019s environmental assessment framework, Matteo Civillini reports.<\/a><\/p>\n

The lesser known International Seabed Authority is currently negotiating a mining code that will lay the rules for extracting minerals used in EV batteries from the international seabed.<\/p>\n

Campaigners are concerned that environmental safeguards for deep sea mining will be weaker than those of the high seas treaty, turning the exemption into a “get out of jail free card”.<\/p>\n

Others remain optimistic the treaty will stitch the patchwork of ocean governance and avoid a two-tier standard: one for the oceans and another for their seabeds.<\/p>\n

This week’s stories<\/strong><\/p>\n