https://archive.md/LTdeq
"The highest drama in New York last Saturday night took place in a badly lit
room of the United Nations building. Bleary delegates from 193 countries had
been cooped up there for two days without a break, and off and on for two weeks
before that. Then Rena Lee, the Singaporean envoy who presided over the
conference, took the mic. “The ship has reached the shore,” she said. And her
eyes teared up as the whole room erupted in cheers and howls.
That metaphorical ship reaching the shore represents the international
community pledging for the first time to protect much of the world’s “high
seas.” Those are the waters beyond the jurisdiction of any particular country,
amounting to about 60% of the oceans.
So far, the high seas have in effect been lawless, aside from some largely
futile international attempts to control problems such as overfishing. In
reality, governments and companies have been able to do pretty much anything
there — contaminate and defile, kill creatures and disrupt ecosystems.
In this way, human treatment of the high seas has led to yet another case of
what economists call the “tragedy of the commons.” It’s what happens when we
collectively ruin something precious because we individually profit from
exploiting it and can’t exclude others from doing the same. The three saddest
examples today are our atmosphere, which we’re polluting with greenhouse
gasses; the outer space around Earth, which we’re junking up with our debris
from satellites and rockets; and indeed the oceans.
In ways we can barely fathom, the seas are crucial for our planet and our
lives, as my colleague Lara Williams explains. They provide every second breath
we take, by producing about half the oxygen in our atmosphere. They soak up and
hold every third carbon dioxide molecule we emit. And they supply, in their
complex ecosystems and food chains, much of what we eat. If we don’t value this
treasure more, it’s only because it’s so hard to visit and see.
For these reasons alone, the draft agreement by the UN is a milestone. If
ratified, it would plug a gaping hole in the UN’s Convention on the Law of the
Sea, which has so far had more to say about territorial waters, those close to
coastlines. The treaty would establish, among other things, “marine protected
areas” in parts of the ocean that teem with biodiversity. Without this first
step, we’d never be able to honor our — the UN’s — pledge to protect a third of
the sea by 2030."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-maternal-mortality-high-seas-atlantic-forest/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
