With the second anniversary of the Global Ocean Treaty agreement now been and gone (it was on Tuesday, 4th March) the UK government has been accused of neglecting matters of the environment over its failure so far to ratify and enshrine the commitment to protect the high seas into UK law.

France and Spain are the only two countries in Europe to have so far signed the Global Ocean Treaty into their national laws, joining 16 other nations – predominantly Small Island ones – to make a legally-binding commitment to protect 30% of the world’s ocean by 2030.

Now, with less than 100 days until the pivotal UN Ocean Conference gets underway in Nice, France this June, environmental campaigners warn that time is ‘running out’ for the British government to take meaningful steps towards ocean protection, particularly as this piece of law may need to pass both primary and secondary legislation to make it happen.

“The only reason the Global Ocean Treaty hasn’t already been signed into UK law is because of a lack of prioritisation from this government,” said Reshima Sharma, deputy head of politics at Greenpeace UK.

“David Lammy has talked a lot about putting the nature and climate emergency at the heart of foreign policy, but the government hasn’t deemed an historic global agreement on biodiversity to be worthy of action so far.

“This could be an easy win for Lammy – relatively quick, simple, and popular with the public. But unless the government moves quickly, it will miss the deadline of ratifying the Global Ocean Treaty before the UN Ocean Conference in June, less than 100 days from now.”

It was hoped that, with confirmation that France and Spain had ratified the Treaty into their own laws at the start of the year, the UK government – and others around the world – would be quick to follow in their footsteps. That desired sense of haste among governments is, however, yet to emerge.

The Treaty has been recognised as the most effective means for delivering a network of high seas ocean sanctuaries in which ecosystems could regenerate and flourish without disturbance. However, without swift action to ratify the agreement across the 60 nations required to bring the full power of the Global Ocean Treaty into effect, protections offered international waters through the current, fragmented means of management will be – at best – thin.

International waters are particularly vulnerable to exploitation including from industrial fishing and oil drilling. There is currently no legal, global instrument that allows for the creation of sanctuaries across them. To this day, less than 1% of the High Seas – which comprises almost two-thirds of the world’s ocean – is fully or highly protected from human activities.

“The UN Ocean Conference is a crucial chance for governments to show global leadership on ocean protection and many states have set this as the deadline for ratification – including the previous UK government,” said Sharma. 

“If our government wants to claim leadership on biodiversity, it must move fast and ratify the Global Ocean Treaty before arriving in Nice. The UK should also get on with building support around high seas sites for protection, so that these are ready to present as soon as the Treaty is implemented.

“Otherwise, it’s just empty words and the potential for embarrassment is high.”

In response to a Select Committee report issued earlier this year in which it questioned the government’s failure to so far ratify the Treaty, the government said “work is in hand on the measures needed to implement the detailed and complex provisions of the Agreement before the UK can ratify.”

In the response, the government also fails both to commit to providing new and additional funding to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, an initiative to help countries vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and to directly address recommendations that climate finance be provided as grants rather than loans.

It’s a level of response like this from the government that has, so far, fallen short of the robust action demanded by many to protect and conserve ocean habitats and make strong its environmental commitments on a global stage that has become a place of increasingly fractured relationships since the abrupt change in approach to international relations from the US administration.

Lukas Meus, global oceans campaigner based at Greenpeace Austria, said: “We face a moment where nationalist politicians are trying to tear down multilateralism and expand extractivism without limits.

“The Global Ocean Treaty is a chance to reset ocean governance towards conservation and away from destruction. It can set the model of what multilateralism should look like: centring Indigenous Peoples and local communities, being rooted in science and accountable to the public good.”

Click here for more from the Oceanographic Newsroom.