Editorial 1: The High Seas Treaty: Key provisions, and the challenges it faces
Recent Context:
- Recently, negotiators from almost every country in the world finalised a new global treaty meant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological resources in the high seas.
- In terms of its significance and impact, this treaty is being compared to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
- High seas are open ocean areas that are outside the jurisdiction of any country — the reason why the treaty is commonly known as the agreement on “biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions”, or BBNJ.
- Oceans are an integral part of the global climate cycle, and perform a range of ecological services including absorption of carbon dioxide and excess heat, because of which this treaty is also being considered as a landmark in the efforts to keep the planet habitable.
- Therefore, Once the treaty becomes international law after ratification by member countries, it will regulate all human activities in the high seas with the objective of ensuring that ocean resources, including biodiversity, are utilised in a sustainable manner, and their benefits are shared equitably among countries.
Current laws of the seas
- The high seas comprise 64 per cent of the ocean surface, and about 43 per cent of the Earth. These areas are home to about 2.2 million marine species and up to a trillion different kinds of microorganisms, according to the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI), a network of global experts on oceans.
- A number of regional, multilateral and global legal frameworks exist to govern the activities in the oceans, the most important of which is the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS), a 1982 agreement that has near-universal acceptance.
About the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS)
- UNCLOS defined the rights and duties of countries in the oceans, the extent of ocean areas over which countries could claim sovereignty, and the legal status of marine resources.
- It also specified a set of general rules for a range of activities in the oceans including navigation, scientific research, and deep-sea mining.
- The treaty established exclusive economic zones (EEZ), ocean areas up to 200 nautical miles (370 km) from the coastline, where a country would have exclusive rights over all economic resources such as fish, oil, minerals, and gas. The high seas are the areas beyond the EEZ of any country.
- The UNCLOS came into being much before climate change and biodiversity became major global concerns. Though it asks countries to protect the ocean ecology and conserve its resources, it does not provide the specific mechanisms or processes to do so.
- Climate change is already influencing, and is being influenced by, ocean systems, and is exacerbating the pressures on marine biodiversity from unregulated human activities.
Why High Sea treaty is needed now?
- Climate change is already influencing, and is being influenced by, ocean systems, and is exacerbating the pressures on marine biodiversity from unregulated human activities.
- It is these specific challenges — a combination of climate change, biodiversity, and pollution that the High Seas Treaty seeks to address.
- The High Seas Treaty will work as an implementation agreement under the UNCLOS, much like the Paris Agreement works under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
- Key provisions of Treaty: The High Seas Treaty has four main objectives:
- Demarcation of marine protected areas (MPAs), rather like there are protected forests or wildlife areas;
- Sustainable use of marine genetic resources and equitable sharing of benefits arising from them;
- Initiation of the practice of environmental impact assessments for all major activities in the oceans; and
- Capacity building and technology transfer.
MARINE-PROTECTED AREAS:
- MPAs are where ocean systems, including biodiversity, are under stress, either due to human activities or climate change. These can be called the national parks or wildlife reserves of the oceans.
- Activities in these areas will be highly regulated, and conservation efforts similar to what happens in forest or wildlife zones, will be undertaken. Only about 1.44 per cent of high seas are currently protected, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
- In December last year, at the meeting of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in Montreal, Canada, countries had agreed to put at least 30 per cent of degraded coastal and marine ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030. MPAs can become an important vehicle to achieve that goal.
ENVIRONMENT IMPACT ASSESSMENTS:
- The high seas are international waters that are open for use by all countries. Under the provisions of the new treaty, commercial or other activities that can have significant impact on the marine ecosystem, or can cause large-scale pollution in the oceans, would require an environmental impact assessment to be done, and the results of this exercise have to be shared with the international community.
CAPACITY BUILDING AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER:
- The treaty lays a lot of emphasis on this, mainly because a large number of countries, especially small island states and landlocked nations, do not have the resources or the expertise to meaningfully participate in the conservation efforts, or to take benefits from the useful exploitation of marine resources.
- At the same time, the obligations put on them by the Treaty, to carry out environmental impact assessments for example, can be an additional burden.
Challenges ahead related to treaty:
- The treaty is the result of more than 20 years of protracted negotiations. The details of all the major contentious provisions, including environmental impact assessments, sharing of benefits from genetic resources, and mobilisation of funds for conservation activities, are still to be worked out.
- Many issues remain unaddressed, including the mechanisms for policing the protected areas, the fate of the projects that are assessed to be heavily polluting, and the resolution of disputes.
- The process of ratification is not expected to be easy. It took UNCLOS 12 years to become international law because the necessary number of ratifications was not reached. The Kyoto Protocol, the precursor to the Paris Agreement, also took eight years to come into effect.
- Therefore, It is need of hour that global community should come together for the implementation of the treaty which is essential for the conservation and protection of environment and ecosystem.
Editorial 2: Virus and oneness challenge: As Covid and H3N2 flu cases rise, here’s how India can help build global resilience
Recent Context:
- The recent rise in Covid-19 cases reminds us that the pandemic is not yet over. It has added some more concern to the ongoing influenza outbreaks.
- On the global stage, countries and a range of institutions are negotiating the “pandemic treaty” a global accord on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.
Concern over new variant of Covid-19
- As is reasonably well known now, the Covid XBB 1.16 variant seems to be fuelling the surge, nearly a three-fold rise in cases over the last fortnight. So far, it has not caused any mortality in India.
- With more than 6,000 currently active cases, 76 samples of XBB 1.16 have tested positive from eight states, the most so far from Karnataka and Maharashtra.
- XBB.1.5 has been reported from 38 countries and declared a variant of interest (VOI) by the WHO. It is expected to emerge as a dominant strain in the UK and Europe and is rapidly spreading in the US as well.
- Even individuals who had received three or four doses of an mRNA vaccine (such as Moderna or Pfizer), plus suffered a BA.5 infection, were not immune to this variant.
- Another potential worry from Israel is the identification of a combination of the BA.1 (Omicron) and infectious BA.2 variants. The virus was detected in the parents of an infant boy, in whom two viruses linked up and exchanged genetic materials. The current test positivity rate is 10 per cent, a worrying metric by all accounts.
Surge of H3N2 Influenza along with Covid-19
- This current concern of Covid-19 is layered with a huge surge of H3N2 Influenza A cases, with at least nine reported deaths.
- Influenza B has also been identified. Both these are seasonal influenzas, driving up the hospital including intensive care admissions.
- Much like Covid-19, the high-risk groups are pregnant women, the elderly and those with chronic medical conditions and immunosuppressive conditions.
- Healthcare workers are at particularly high risk of getting affected and in turn spread to vulnerable persons.
An international effort to combat Covid-19
- During the Covid-19 pandemic there was lack of coordination among the countries related to reporting of covid variant in time and the international agencies not responding adequately.
- Local, national, and global governance is increasingly being recognised as an important determinant of the emergence and re-emergence of diseases of animal origin.
- To re-emphasise, both Covid-19 and the influenza viruses have animal origins “spill over” in technical jargon when a virus is able to overcome several barriers to “jump” and become feasible in another species.
- World Health Assembly set off a global process in December 2021, at its second-ever special session, to draft and negotiate a convention agreement to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response along with intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) that includes WHO’s 194 countries is steering this process.
- The World Health Assembly in 2024 is expected to ratify these, ushering in a “comprehensive, complementary and synergistic set of global health agreements”.
- The WHO Director-General referred to this initiative as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen the global health architecture to protect and promote the well-being of all people.
India as a global leader of global south on the international platform G20
- India, representing the Global South, is expected to play a role in integrating equity considerations in the ongoing negotiations.
- Scholars have enunciated three key equity considerations.
- First, the appropriate use, recognition, and protection of indigenous knowledge, which has traditionally recognised the interconnectedness of human, non-human and ecosystem health.
- Second, the substantive and equitable inclusion of women and minority groups, including racial, ethnic and sexual minorities – traditionally under-represented groups in treaty design and implementation.
- Third, the use of health equity impact and gender-based analysis to identify and develop mitigation plans for the potentially inequitable impact of epidemics.
Way forward:
- There is need for an occupational health integrated surveillance system, building and nurturing partnerships to connect and share data on infectious pathogens in wildlife, companion animals, livestock, humans, the environment, and related risk factors.
- India will also need to build OH capacity and pandemic preparedness monitoring and assessment into the state and district governance architecture that will draw upon an inter-/ transdisciplinary OH evaluation framework and methodology, including metrics for measuring success.