Carlos M. Duarte
Executive Director of the Global Coral Reef R&D Acceleration Platform and holder of the Tarek Ahmed Juffali Research Chair in Red Sea Ecology at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia
The treaty reached focuses on the protection of 30% of international ocean waters, which will implement the December 2022 COP15 resolution of the Convention on Biological Diversity in that regard. In addition, the treaty includes provisions for any use of sub-seabed resources to be subject to a prior environmental impact study, which is not a moratorium on seabed mining activity as some, myself included, wished, but at least it does not leave this ecosystem completely unprotected as it has been until now.
Where the agreement seems to be even more vague, in the absence of reading the text, is in the sharing of economic benefits derived from the ocean's genetic resources, where the treaty seems to contain vagueness, such as that it will be exploited on an equitable basis, without articulating a mechanism to achieve this. A decade ago we published research showing that 10 nations owned 97% of the ocean's genetic resources, with one company, BASF, owning 70% of the patents. In our work we already pointed to a mechanism for resource sharing, which is more about sharing and capacity building than monetary compensation. This will have to wait, perhaps another decade. In short, a step forward but not with the necessary momentum.