Abstract
Areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) constitute 61% of the world's oceans and are collectively managed by countries under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Growing concern regarding the deteriorating state of the oceans and ineffective management of ABNJ has resulted in negotiations to develop an international legally binding instrument (ILBI) for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction under UNCLOS. To inform these negotiations, we identified existing and emerging human activities and influences that affect ABNJ and evaluated management options available to mitigate the most pervasive, with highest potential for impact and probability of emergence. The highest-ranking activities and influences that affect ABNJ were fishing/hunting, maritime shipping, climate change and its associated effects, land-based pollution and mineral exploitation. Management options are diverse and available through a variety of actors, although their actions are not always effective. Area-based management tools (ABMTs), including marine protected areas (MPAs), were the only consistently effective option to mitigate impacts across high-ranked activities and influences. However, addressing land-based pollution will require national action to prevent this at its source, and MPAs offer only a partial solution for climate change. A new ABNJ ILBI could help unify management options and actors to conserve marine biodiversity and ensure sustainable use. Incorporating a mechanism to establish effective ABMTs into the ILBI will help deliver multiple objectives based on the ecosystem approach.
Highlights
Areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) constitute international waters outside the 200 nautical mile limits of national jurisdiction and cover 61% of the world’s oceans
ABNJ are governed under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which assigns countries the right to exercise “freedoms” to fish, navigate and conduct scientific research amongst others, while obliging them to protect the marine environment and conserve living resources through national action and regional and international cooperation
Whether we choose to act on a given human impact on the envi ronment is based on a combination of scientific information and sub jective value judgements: do we value something today more than tomorrow, what is fair for different nations or people, or what value do we place on non-human species? While science cannot resolve the value debate, it can provide insight into the management options to counter climate change and its associated effects: (1) Mitigation: reducing greenhouse gas emissions is clearly neces sary to slow climate change (Rogelj et al, 2016)
Summary
Areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) constitute international waters outside the 200 nautical mile limits of national jurisdiction and cover 61% of the world’s oceans. Existing sector-focussed management organisations have largely failed to protect biodiversity in the high seas given their narrow remits, governance gaps and limited coordination and cooperation, and inherent difficulties in managing human activities across a global commons (Freestone, 2018; Wright et al, 2015, 2018). These limitations have led to loss of ocean life, resulting in international negotiations to develop an international legally binding instrument (ILBI) for the con servation and sustainable use of biodiversity beyond national jurisdic tion under UNCLOS (UNGA, 2015; Wright et al, 2018). We make recommendations in light of ongoing UN negotiations
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