The Limits of Sectoral and Regional Efforts to Designate High Seas Marine Protected Areas

David Freestone

doi:10.1017/aju.2018.45

Abstract

This essay addresses the question of how the international community could designate high seas marine protected areas (MPAs) that would be binding on all states. This is a key issue for the forthcoming UN negotiations of an International Legally Binding Instrument (ILBI) on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. However, this is a longstanding question, the importance of which transcends the ILBI negotiations. Some have argued for the establishment of a centralized Ocean Governance Authority, whose decisions would be universally binding; others have argued that existing regional and sectoral bodies can be relied on to protect biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The experience of the Sargasso Sea project is that some sort of centralized or coordinating regime is needed to make MPAs effective across regional and sectoral bodies.

Highlights

This essay addresses the question of how the international community could designate high seas marine protected areas (MPAs) that would be binding on all states
The Conference of Parties could designate those areas as marine protected areas, but if such areas were within the jurisdictional area of a regional or sectoral body, the Conference Secretariat or the scientific advisory commission itself would consult with those bodies to discuss appropriate conservation measures
The first high seas MPA, established in 1993 by agreement among France, Monaco, and Italy, was the famous Pelagos Whale Sanctuary in the Mediterranean Sea around Corsica,[18] which was subsequently absorbed into the system of “Specially Protected Areas of Mediterranean Importance.”[19]. In 2010, the parties to the OSPAR Convention in the North-East Atlantic[20] established six MPAs in areas beyond national jurisdiction; they established a seventh in 2012.21 In the Southern Ocean, the parties to the Convention on Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources have to date established two huge MPAs: in 2010, the South Orkney Islands[22] and in 2017, the world’s largest MPA in the Ross Sea.[23]