Representatives of native peoples all over the world take part in a meeting during the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity in the resort city of Cancún, Mexico. Indigenous delegates in the summit are defending their rights and their natural resources, which are threatened by climate change, the extractive industries and biopiracy. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
CANCUN, Mexico, Dec 12 2016 (IPS)

“We don’t have access to marine areas, because most are protected areas or are in private hands. We indigenous people have been losing access to our territories, as this decision became a privilege of the state,” complained Donald Rojas, a member of the Brunka indigenous community in Costa Rica.

The complaint from the head of the non-governmental National Indigenous Council of Costa Rica was in response to the ban keeping the Brunka and Huetar people from entering five of their ancestral land and sea territories, after they were declared natural protected areas.

“That restricts access to and management of resources,” said Rojas, who is a member of one of the eight native peoples in that Central American country of 4.8 million people, where 104,000 indigenous people live on a combined area of 3,500 square km.

Rojas is one of the Latin American indigenous leaders participating in different events and forums in the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, which has brought together nearly 6,500 delegates of governments, international organisations, academia and civil society in Cancun, Mexico from Dec. 2-17.

Native people used to fish and gather food in these areas located near the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, within Costa Rica’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

This conflict reflects the growing exploitation of EEZs by the states, which at the same time face an obligation to increase their protected marine areas and clean up the oceans – a contradiction that generates friction, and where the local communities are often victims.

This collision of interests has been seen during the global summit on biodiversity in the coastal city of Cancún, 1,200 km southeast of Mexico City, where the 13th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), or COP13, as well as other intergovernmental events and forums related to the preservation of the planet’s natural wealth, is taking place.

Coastal waters and continental shelves are increasingly exploited for fishing, agricultural, industrial or touristic purposes.

In the EEZ, which comprises a 200-nautical mile strip (240 km) from the coast, traditional activities are carried out such as fishing, extraction of oil and dredging of ports, that now extend to ultra-deep water drilling, underwater mining and extraction of minerals from polymetallic nodules.

Altogether, protected marine areas cover about 15 million square kilometres or 4.12 per cent of the world’s oceans, which is still far from the goal of 10 per cent, although the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) highlighted in Cancún the increase achieved in recent years.

But protection of coastal and marine areas under national jurisdiction has already reached 10 per cent, according to the “Protected Planet Report 2016” by UNEP and other international and civil society organisations.

Indigenous women in Ecuador demand protection of native corn during the global summit on biodiversity taking place Dec. 2-17 in Cancún, in southeast Mexico. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

However, only 0.25 per cent of areas beyond national jurisdiction are protected, which demonstrates a significant gap in conservation efforts and underlines the urgent need to seek ways to address the challenges of expanding protected areas.

Goal 11 of the 20 points of the Strategic Plan for Biological Diversity 2011-2020, wbich includes the Aichi Targets, adopted in 2010 by the state parties to the CBD, states that “by 2020, at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water, and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, and integrated into the wider landscapes and seascapes.”

Moreover, the 14th of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which the international community has set itself to achieve by 2030 proposes to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

The 10 targets included in SDG 14 refer to healthy seas, the sustainable use of resources and the reduction of pollution.

“It’s a big challenge. Two approaches can be adopted. One is based on marine planning and management, and the other on selection of economic sectors and closed seasons,” said Christian Neumann, Marine Ecosystem Services project manager for the Norway-based non-governmental GRID-Arendal, which collaborates with UNEP.

“The general problem is the overexploitation; it’s very difficult to put them (the two approaches) on balance. There is a growing understanding that in order to achieve sustainable development, a healthy ocean is needed,” he told IPS.

Construction projects highlight the contradiction between the exploitation of the EEZs and the preservation of healthy oceans and the rights of coastal inhabitants.

One example near Cancún is the expansion of the port of Veracruz, which is going ahead in spite of the threat it poses to the Veracruz Reef System, a natural protected area that spans coral reefs and subtidal aquatic beds, shallow marine waters, sandy beaches and mangroves.

The reef system was declared a national marine park in 1992.

The project, presented as the biggest port investment in the country in 100 years, includes the construction of two 7,740-metre-long breakwaters, an 800-metre-diameter harbor and nine kinds of dock terminals in a nine-square-km area.

In Honduras, the Misquito indigenous people are waiting to see the results of the oil exploration, which started in 2014 in the department of Gracias a Dios off the country’s Caribbean coast.

“It’s a fishing area, so there is an impact on this sector. We need to know what will happen with those jobs,” Yuam Pravia, a delegate from the non-governmental Moskitia Asla Takanka – Unity of the Moskitia (MASTA) in Honduras, told IPS during the conference.

In 2014, the British BG Group (which has since been taken over by Royal Dutch Shell) began exploration in a 35,000-square-km area granted in concession by the Honduran government.

In an attempt to safeguard their rights, the Misquito people set a series of conditions in order to allow the exploration to go ahead. But since the company failed to comply, the Misquito and Garifuna people are considering withdrawing their approval.

In Costa Rica a dialogue began between the government and indigenous peoples to solve the question of territorial access. “We are losing a fundamental basis of our indigenous identity. Since the government does not acknowledge this, an entire biological and cultural system is being violated,” said Rojas.

For Neumann, energy, mining and waste are becoming serious issues. “We need to consider them. But we have the (question of) economic needs as well. It’s difficult to think about alternatives for millions of fishermen,” he pointed out.

In Pravia’s opinion, governments should protect the rights of communities. “They just issue permits, without considering the impacts. There is a lack of information,” he complained.

A turtle swims in a Marine Protected Area. Credit: Foreign and Commonwealth Office

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 2015 (IPS)

The 193-member General Assembly adopted a resolution Friday aimed at drafting a legally binding international treaty for the conservation of marine biodiversity and to govern the mostly lawless high seas beyond national jurisdiction.

The resolution was the result of more than nine years of negotiations by an Ad Hoc Informal Working Group, which first met in 2006.“This groundbreaking decision puts us on a path toward having a legal framework in place that will allow for the comprehensive management of ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction.” -- Elizabeth Wilson

If and when the treaty is adopted, it will be the first global treaty to include conservation measures such as marine protected areas and reserves, environmental impact assessments, access to marine genetic resources and benefit sharing, capacity building and the transfer of marine technology.

The High Seas Alliance (HSA), a coalition of some 27 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), played a significant role in pushing for negotiations on the proposed treaty and has been campaigning for this resolution since 2011.

Asked if the treaty will be finalised by the targeted date of 2018, Elizabeth Wilson, director of international ocean policy at The Pew Charitable Trusts, a member of the HSA, told IPS: “Not exactly, although we do expect significant progress.”

The first round of formal negotiations is expected to take place in 2016 and continue through 2017.

The General Assembly will decide by September of 2018 on the convening of an intergovernmental conference to finalise the text of the agreement and set a start date for the conference.

Wilson said it is likely that the intergovernmental conference would then meet multiple times over approximately two years to accomplish this goal.

Asked how the treaty will change the current “lawlessness” in the high seas, Wilson said: “This groundbreaking decision puts us on a path toward having a legal framework in place that will allow for the comprehensive management of ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction.”

Today, she pointed out, the high seas are governed by a patchwork of inadequate international, regional, and sectorial agreements and organisations.

A new treaty would help to organise and coordinate conservation and management. That includes the ability to create fully protected marine reserves that are closed off to harmful activities. Right now there is no way to arrange for such legally binding protections, she added.

Sofia Tsenikli of Greenpeace said: “The high seas accounts for nearly half our planet – the half that has been left without law or protection for far too long. A global network of marine reserves is urgently needed to bring life back into the ocean – this new treaty should make that happen.”

In a statement released Friday, the HSA said the resolution follows the Rio+20 conference in 2012 where Heads of State committed to address high seas protection.

The conference came close to agreeing to a new treaty then, but was prevented from doing so by a few governments which have remained in opposition to a Treaty ever since.

Asked about the significant difference between the 1982 landmark Law of the Sea Treaty and the proposed high seas treaty, Wilson told IPS the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which is recognised as the “constitution” for global ocean governance, has a broad scope and does not contain the detailed provisions necessary to address specific activities, nor does it establish a management mechanism and rules for biodiversity protection in the high seas.

Since the adoption of UNCLOS in 1982, there have been two subsequent implementing agreements to address gaps and other areas that were not sufficiently covered under UNCLOS, one related to seabed mining and the other related to straddling and highly migratory fish stocks, she added.

This new agreement will be the third implementing agreement developed under UNCLOS, Wilson said.

According to HSA, Friday’s resolution stresses “the need for the comprehensive global regime to better address the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction.”

It allows for a two-year preparatory process (PrepCom) to consider the elements that could comprise the treaty.

This will begin in 2016 and culminate by the end of 2017, with a decision whether to convene a formal treaty negotiating conference in 2018.

The “high seas” is the ocean beyond any country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) ‑ amounting to 64 percent of the ocean ‑ and the ocean seabed that lies beyond the continental shelf of any country, according to a background briefing released by the HSA.

These areas make up nearly 50 percent of the surface of the Earth and include some of the most environmentally important, critically threatened and least protected ecosystems on the planet.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

A cow stands in the middle of a dried-out agricultural plot in Sri Lanka's northern Jaffna District. Credit: Kanya D'Almeida/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 6 2014 (IPS)

In pure numbers, the past few decades have been marked by destruction: over the last 40 years, Earth has lost 52 percent of its wild animals; nearly 17 percent of the world’s forests have been felled in the last half-century; freshwater ecosystems have witnessed a 75-percent decline in animal populations since 1970; and nearly 95 percent of coral reefs are today threatened by pollution, coastal development and overfishing.

A slew of international conferences and agreements over the years have attempted to pull the brakes on what appears to be a runaway train, setting targets and passing legislation aimed at protecting and conserving the remaining slivers of land and sea as yet untainted by humanity’s massive carbon footprint.

In 2010, building on the foundation laid by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), scores of experts and activists gathered in Nagoya, Japan, drafted the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, which included 20 points known as the Aichi Targets, encompassing everything from land preservation to sustainable fishing practices.

Though the goals were subsequently re-affirmed by the U.N. general assembly, and reiterated yet again at the 2012 Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil, scientists say losses continue to outpace gains, as forests are chopped down, garbage emptied into oceans and animal habitats razed to the ground to make way for human development and industry.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing 12th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD (COP 12), a United Nations progress report on the state of global biodiversity released Monday in Pyeongchang, Korea, called urgent attention to unmet targets and challenges ahead.

Coming exactly a year before the halfway point of the 2011-2020 Strategic Plan and the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity, ‘Global Biodiversity Outlook 4’ (GBO-4) called for a “dismantling of the drivers of biodiversity loss, which are often embedded deep within our systems of policy-making, financial accounting, and patterns of production and consumption.”

For instance, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)’s latest Living Planet Report, humans are “using nature’s gifts as if we had more than just one Earth at our disposal.”

The organisation’s Living Planet Index (LPI), based on studies of over 10,000 representative populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, found that exploitation of natural resources by humans accounted for the vast majority of wildlife losses in the last four decades (37 percent), followed by habitat degradation (31 percent), climate change (seven percent) and habitat loss (13 percent).

The same report found that human impacts such as increased pollution and construction projects were largely responsible for the steep decline of wildlife in freshwater systems, with 45,000 large dams (over 15 metres) preventing the free flow of some of the world’s major rivers, at a huge cost to biodiversity.

Marine animal populations have also plummeted by 40 percent, making a strong case for the rapid designation of adequate marine protected areas. However, according to the GBO-4 released today, “more than half of marine regions have less than five percent of their area protected.”

Of the five Strategic Goals (A-E) of the 10-year biodiversity plan, GBO-4 highlighted numerous challenges, including threats to natural resources provoked by greatly increased total global consumption levels (Target 4), rising nutrient pollution impacting aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity, compounded by increased pollution from chemicals, fertilisers and plastics (Target 8), a rising extinction risk for birds, mammals and amphibians (Target 12), and a lack of capacity to mobilise concerned citizens worldwide (Target 19).

According to David Ainsworth, information officer for the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, “The question of agriculture and food security is probably one of the biggest challenges we are facing.”

“Given that we know we’re looking at a substantial population increase by the end of the decade, which is likely going to be matched with a change in dietary patterns such as the consumption of more meat, we are probably going to experience tremendous pressures on biodiversity just in trying to deal with the agricultural situation alone,” he told IPS.

A lot of this could be solved, he added, by dealing with food production systems, by promoting a different model to the typical, rich, North American diet and by tackling food waste at all stages of the production cycle, from wastage in fields and transportation chains to food distribution centers and even in the home.

Asia-Pacific: under tremendous pressure

With a population of just over 4.2 billion people, the Asia-Pacific region faces a unique set of challenges to preserving its biodiversity.

According to Scott Perkin, head of the Natural Resources Group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)-Asia, the region “has taken some important steps towards the achievement of the Aichi Targets.

“A majority of countries in the region have revised and strengthened their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (Target 17), and a significant number have ratified the Nagoya Protocol (Target 16),” Perkin told IPS in an email.

But the region as a whole remains under tremendous pressure, he said, adding, “Population growth and rapid economic development continue to fuel the loss and degradation of natural habitats, and much greater efforts will be required if Target 5 on halving the rate of loss of forests and other habitats by 2020 is to be achieved.”

Indonesia alone experienced a deforestation rate of one million hectares a year between 2000 and 2003. A recent study indicates that in 2012 the country likely hacked away 840,000 hectares of primary forest, outstripping even Brazil, which cut down 460,000 hectares that same year.

Perkin said the illegal wildlife trade in Asia is yet another critical issue, one that will make achievement of Target 12 – preventing the extinction of known species – especially challenging.

The region also provides a stark example of the links between biodiversity and economic gains, a point also highlighted in the report released today. According to GBO-4, reducing deforestation rates have been estimated to result in an annual benefit of 183 million dollars in the form of ecosystem services.

The same pattern is evident throughout the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in places where governments have replaced marine resource exploitation with conservation efforts.

In the western Pacific Ocean nation of Palau, for instance, the banning of commercial fisheries has boosted the tiny island’s ecotourism potential, with visitors rushing to explore the country’s bustling coastal waters.

A single shark, which had hitherto brought the country a few hundred dollars for its fin, considered a delicacy in East Asia, now fetches 1.9 million dollars over its entire lifetime.

In Indonesia too, the creation of the world’s largest sanctuary for manta rays has raised the sea-creature’s economic potential from some 500 dollars (when used for meat or medicine), to over one million dollars as a tourist attraction, according to Bradnee Chambers, executive secretary of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP)’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.

Still, it will take more than piecemeal measures to bring about the scale of protection and conservation required to keep biodiversity levels at a safe threshold.

As Ainsworth pointed out, “The core of this issue goes beyond the questions of where we put our roads and highways – it goes to fundamental ways of how we organise ourselves socially and economically in relation to nature and biodiversity.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Purse-seiners have been unsustainably fishing the bigeye tuna in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area. Credit: Christopher Pala/IPS

By Christopher Pala
WASHINGTON, May 9 2014 (IPS)

After years of claiming untruthfully that the world’s most fished marine protected area was “off limits to fishing and other extractive uses,” President Anote Tong of the Pacific island state of Kiribati and his cabinet have voted to close it to all commercial fishing by the end of the year.

The action, if implemented, would allow populations of tuna and other fish depleted by excessive fishing to return to natural levels in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), a patch of ocean the size of California studded with pristine, uninhabited atolls.The move comes at a time global fish populations are steadily declining as increasingly efficient vessels are able to extract them wholesale from ever-more-remote and deep waters around the globe.

While no-take zones of comparative size exist in Hawaii, the Chagos Islands and the Coral Sea, none are as rich in marine life, making this potentially the most effective marine reserve in the world.

The news drew high praise from scientists and environmentalists.

“This is a big win for conservation and long overdue,” said Bill Raynor, ‎director of the Indo-Pacific Division of The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest conservation organisation. “Now I hope that the other Pacific countries that are contemplating giant marine reserves will follow PIPA’s example.”

These include Palau, where President Tommy Remengesau has suggested closing off its entire Exclusive Economic Zone to commercial fishing, as well as the Cook Islands and New Caledonia, which are studying how much fishing to allow on protected areas even larger than the Phoenix.

“This is fantastic news,” said Lagi Toribau of Greenpeace. “The area will provide a crucial sanctuary for the region’s marine life from highly migratory tunas and turtles to reef fishes and sharks.”

The move comes at a time global fish populations are steadily declining as increasingly efficient vessels are able to extract them wholesale from ever-more-remote and deep waters around the globe.

The international fleets of industrial purse-seiners, dominated by Spanish, Asian and U.S.companies, have converged on the Western and Central Pacific since the start of the millennium after depleting the stocks elsewhere.

The result has been a fast and unsustainable decline of the bigeye, the most prized for sushi after the fast-disappearing bluefin, and more moderate shrinking of the yellowfin and skipjack populations. The fishery’s own scientists have called for a reduction of the catch by 30 percent, but instead it has increased by that amount.

In contrast, for years, Tong’s Wikipedia page has stated, “In 2008, his government declared 150,000 square miles (390,000 km2) “of [the] Phoenix Islands marine area a fully protected marine park, making it off limits to fishing and other extractive uses.”

In a speech still he gave at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit two years ago still visible on Youtube, Tong mentions “the initiative of my country in closing off 400,000 square kilometres of our [waters] from commercial fishing activities,” calling it “our contribution to global ocean conservation efforts.”

In fact, when PIPA was created, only in the three percent of the reserve that’s around the islands, where virtually no fishing was going on, was it banned. In the rest of the reserve, the catch increased, reaching 50,000 tonnes in 2012 – an unheard-of amount in any protected area.

In an interview in Tarawa, the capital island, a year ago, Tong had brushed aside objections and said he had no intention of ending fishing in the reserve entirely anytime soon. The management plan called for closing another 25 percent next year if Kiribati’s Western partner, the Washington-based Conservation International, donated 8.5 million dollars into PIPA’s trust fund.

The money would be to compensate Kiribati for losses in income from fishing licenses stemming from closure – losses many experts said were entirely imaginary, as PIPA makes up only 11 percent of Kiribati’s waters and the fishing vessels could easily catch the far-traveling tuna elsewhere, they said.

But following reports in the international media, including IPS, on the contrast between Tong’s claims and reality, he said in a press release last September that closing the reserve to all fishing, far from entailing sacrifice as he had previously insisted, would make good business sense for his people.

Ashley McCrea-Strub, a fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, argues that a complete closure “would create both capital and interest.” She explained that the much-reduced tuna, billfish and sharks populations would likely double inside the reserve to reach their natural, original levels within a couple of decades: that’s the capital.

“PIPA is big enough that some of the tuna will spend all their lives inside it, so they’ll be able to reproduce freely,” she said. “Once the density gets high, more fishes are going to start venturing outside the reserve in search of food and can be caught outside the border,” she said. “That’s the interest.”

Though PIPA is the signature project for Kiribati’s two foreign partners, Conservation International (on whose board Tong sits) and the New England Aquarium, neither organisation has made any announcement. The news came in a short, anonymous paragraph posted on PIPA’s website reporting that the cabinet on Jan. 29 voted to close the reserve to all commercial fishing by the end of the year.

An Internet search found that One Fiji television station’s website ran a story on the vote on Feb. 27, quoting Kiribati Radio (which lacks a website). Fiji One said the measure was taken “as a commitment towards protecting and conserving its marine resources as well as a bid to attract donors to invest in the PIPA Trust Fund,” which has five million dollars.

Asked why there had been no public announcement for what marine scientists said was the most far-reaching marine closure in years if enforced, Gregory Stone, who first suggested creating the reserve and is now a vice president at both Conservation International and the New England Aquarium, did not respond to several e-mailed requests for comment.

The Chagossians pictured here when they visited the archipelago in 2006. Many are still fighting to return to the islands they were evicted from almost 40 years ago. Courtesy: Chagos Refugees Group (CRG).

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Feb 20 2014 (IPS)

“The Marine Protected Area (MPA) created around the Chagos archipelago is a new obstacle that the British government has placed in our path to prevent us from going back to our homeland,” claims Olivier Bancoult, leader of the Chagos Refugees Group (CRG).

For the past 40 years, the Chagossians have been fighting to return to their home in Chagos archipelago, a set of 55 islets situated 1,200 km north of the Indian Ocean Island of Mauritius.

They lived there for five generations until the early 1970s when the archipelago was excised from Mauritius by the United Kingdom. The Chagossians were evicted and the archipelago now forms part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

“We’ll not give up,” Bancoult tells IPS as he prepares for a new legal battle against the British government, which will be heard by the High Court of Justice in London on Mar. 30.

Bancoult was four when he and his mother, Rita, came to Mauritius. In 1983 he created the CRG to defend the rights of his community and over the years the organisation has staged numerous public demonstrations and hunger strikes.

The MPA covers almost 545,000 square kilometres and aims to protect the natural resources of the Chagos archipelago by implementing strict controls over fishing, habitation, damage to the environment and the killing, harming and collecting of animals.

The U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) designated the archipelago as an area that needs to be preserved “on the basis that the archipelago is one of the most precious, unpolluted, tropical ocean environments left on earth.”

A map of the Chagos archipelago which shows the proposed Marine Protected Area. Courtesy: Nasseem Ackbarally

Following a feasibility study in 2002, the FCO concluded that resettlement on the Chagos archipelago was unfeasible due to the islands’ low elevation and “the islands are already subject to regular overtopping events, flooding and erosion of the outer beaches.” It also said that “as global warming develops, these events are likely to increase in severity and regularity.”

However, scientists Richard Dunne and Barbara Brown, who have been working on coral reefs in the Indian Ocean for several decades, do not agree.

Dunne tells IPS that the British government has been presenting these findings to Parliament, court and the public for the last 10 years as an argument against the resettlement of the Chagossians back in their homeland.

“We now know that the feasibility study was scientifically flawed and that little reliance can be placed upon its conclusions,” he says, adding that this may be partly the reason why the FCO is undertaking a new feasibility study this year.

“The Chagos are low-lying coral islands with a mean elevation above sea-level of only about two metres. As a consequence, they are like the Maldives to the north — very susceptible to changes in mean sea-level, storms, erosion and flooding,” he says.

But Dunne sees no reason why the Chagossians cannot return to the archipelago.

“The Chagossians have lived on these islands for nearly two centuries, and on the scientific evidence that we have today, there is no reason that they should not continue there for at least the foreseeable future, by which I mean the next four or five decades.”

Bancoult believes his people can live in such an environment.

“How come Europeans, Americans and other wealthy people from elsewhere are staying for months on Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos and Solomon Islands which are part of archipelago, while Chagossians cannot live there?” he asks.

Simon Hughes, secretary of the Chagos Conservation Trust (CCT), an organisation that has been working to conserve the biodiversity and marine ecosystem of the Chagos archipelago for the last 20 years, denies the MPA was designed to keep Chagossians from returning.

“The MPA is only three years old. Neither would the MPA be a very effective tool for this purpose. Its framework can be revised to accommodate a local population if there is one in future,” he tells IPS.

“Since under the law of BIOT there is no right of abode in the territory and all visitors need a permit, the creation of a marine protected area has no direct immediate impact on the Chagossian community,” Hughes adds.

The CCT also argues that sea level rise and erosion continue to be a problem for the islands.

According to the CCT, the benefits of an MPA around the Chagos are manyfold. It says the absence of a settled human population, the strict environmental regime and the minimal footprint of the military base on Diego Garcia have enabled a high level of environmental preservation to have occurred.

“The islands, reef systems and waters around the Chagos in terms of preservation and biodiversity are among the richest on the planet and they contain about half of all the reefs of the Indian Ocean which remain in good condition,” Hughes explains.

British lawyer and lead counsel for the Chagossians, Richard Gifford, tells IPS that the Chagos is a magnificent place to live but “obviously, there are problems to address in restoring the infrastructure, the economy, the housing and the transport but the prospects are extremely positive.”

Most of the original 1,500 Chagossians have passed away. Currently, the remaining 682 are determined speak out about the MPA.

“We are working on our own resettlement plan that we will submit to the three governments involved — Mauritius, the U.K. and the U.S. — later this year,” Bancoult says.

Olivier Bancoult, leader of the Chagos Refugees Group (CRG), feel that the 2010 creation of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) created around the Chagos archipelago, prevents the resettlement of the Chagossians. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

Mt. Herschel from Cape Hallet, Antarctica with Seabee Hook penguin colony in foreground. Credit: Andrew Mandemaker/cc by 2.5

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 15 2013 (IPS)

International negotiations between more than two-dozen countries to set up conservation areas in the Antarctic seas were thrown into confusion Monday when the Russian and Ukrainian delegations questioned the body’s legal standing to make such designations, despite previous precedent.

Representatives from 25 countries are currently in special two-day talks in Germany under the auspices of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), an organisation that over the past half-century has been widely credited with keeping the Southern Ocean in unusually pristine condition.“The Ross Sea MPA proposal would protect a pristine ecosystem that has fully intact food webs and hosts numerous iconic species." -- Andrea Kavanagh of the Pew Charitable Trusts

“This morning a legal question came to the table [on] whether CCAMLR is in a position to establish marine protected areas [MPAs] in the Ross Sea,” Terje Lobach, chair of the CCAMLR Commission, told reporters on Monday on the sidelines of the talks in Bremerhaven, Germany, according to a recording obtained by IPS.

“The issue was raised by Russia and also by Ukraine, whether CCAMLR really has the competence of establishing MPAs … But many lawyers spoke against the suggestion by Russia and Ukraine and said definitely CCAMLR has the power to mandate MPAs.”

At issue is a proposal, put forth by the United States and New Zealand, that would create the world’s largest marine protected area, in the Ross Sea off Antarctica. If the negotiations are successful, the results would also constitute the most significant example of international powers collectively creating such a conservation area in international waters.

“The Ross Sea MPA proposal would protect a pristine ecosystem that has fully intact food webs and hosts numerous iconic species, such as whales and penguins,” Andrea Kavanagh, director of the Southern Ocean Sanctuaries Campaign at the Pew Charitable Trusts, a Washington-based conservation organisation, told IPS from the Germany summit.

“This is a prime opportunity for countries to protect an ecosystem that’s still intact, but it’s also an opportunity, for the first time ever, for multiple governments to come together to create a marine protected area of this size – usually this is done in just one country’s territory. If they can see this through, it would be historic in terms of international ocean governance and conservation.”

The administration of President Barack Obama has repeatedly offered its strong support for the Ross Sea proposal, a stance it reiterated on Monday, calling the move a potentially “historic step”.

“The Ross Sea Region is one of the last and greatest ocean wilderness areas on the planet,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

“With limited human impact to-date and a long history of scientific exploration and discovery, the Ross Sea Region is also a natural laboratory for scientific study to better understand climate change, our oceans, and our world.”

On Saturday, a group of high-profile conservation advocates, speaking under the umbrella of the Ocean Elders, sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, reminding him of Russia’s part in founding CCAMLR and noting Russia’s “critical leadership role to play in determining the future of Antarctica”.

Stalling tactic?

The U.S.-New Zealand Ross Sea proposal would protect around 600,000 square miles of marine ecosystem (an additional proposal would sequester off another 733,000 square miles off the coast of East Antarctica). The two areas together would double the amount of marine ecosystem currently under international conservation protection.

Within that area, however, commercial fishing would be prohibited, and it is this element of the proposal that has riled certain countries that would prefer that any protected area regulates but does not outlaw commercial fishing operations.

When the proposal was first put forward, last fall, Russia and Ukraine were joined by China, Japan and South Korea in questioning the idea, particularly the science around the MPA’s proposed delineation. Indeed, the current summit was called specifically in order to address those questions.

Since then, U.S. and New Zealand officials have reportedly reworked and bolstered the scientific rationale for the proposal. Monday and Tuesday mark the critical political discussions by the CCAMLR commission, but for the previous several days the organisation’s Scientific Committee sifted through the scientific data behind the proposals.

On Monday, the Scientific Committee announced that it was suggesting that the proposal for the Ross Sea MPA go forward.

“We didn’t necessarily talk about the size [of the MPAs] per se, but we talked about the science that underpins the objectives for those areas that were identified. For many of the areas, we felt there was sufficient science and was the best scientific data available to support those areas,” Chris Jones, chair of the Scientific Committee, told reporters Monday.

“In terms of the Scientific Committee, I think our work is done – we have now established that the best available science has been used to underpin these proposals … It’s really up to the commission now and the values of the various members of CCAMLR – and the political will.”

Over the past half-year, U.S. and New Zealand representatives have also reportedly engaged in extensive bilateral deliberations with the rest of the 25 countries, particularly with the holdouts. Given these discussions, observers say the Russian delegation’s new questions about CCAMLR’s legal standing took nearly all delegations by surprise on Monday.

“If nothing else this is pretty bad-faith negotiating, as the proponent countries have been going to Russia, talking to their scientists, inviting comments, inviting discussion – never once did Russia mention that it thinks this body might not have the legal authority to establish an MPA,” the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Kavanagh says.

“Further, no else has ever expressed this legal concern before, so it’s unclear whether this is just a delaying tactic or whether the Russian delegation is awaiting instructions from the capital about how to proceed.”

Yet according to the CCAMLR Commission’s Lobach, initial discussions among legal experts at Bremerhaven were clear that the body does have legal standing to create MPAs – as it did in 2011 with a smaller area, in the South Orkney Islands, to which Russia agreed.

Because CCAMLR operates on a consensus basis, however, the queries raised by Russia and Ukraine could now derail the Ross Sea MPA proposal. The organisation’s rules state that there will be no possibility of extending the discussions beyond Tuesday.

“If this issue is not resolved,” Kavanagh says, “it is likely that other countries won’t be willing to discuss the proposal any longer.”

Over 10 million residents of Small Island Developing States depend on the Pacific Ocean for survival. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Jun 8 2013 (IPS)

The immense scale of the Pacific Ocean, at 165 million square kilometres, inspires awe and fascination, but for those who inhabit the 22 Pacific island countries and territories, it is the very source of life. Without it, livelihoods and economies would collapse, hunger and ill-health would become endemic and human survival would be threatened.

But as populations rapidly escalate, the sustainable future of this vast ecosystem hangs in the balance, while the pressing need for economic development in a region of Small Island Developing States competes with the urgency of combating climate change and stemming environmental loss.

In a message to the global community on Saturday, designated by the United Nations as World Ocean Day, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged nation states to “reverse the degradation of the marine environment due to pollution, overexploitation and acidification.” Nowhere is this triple threat more evident than in the waters of the Pacific.

The largest ocean in the world, it covers one third of the earth’s surface and an area more expansive than the total of all its landmasses, while its natural processes determine the global climate.

The ocean’s health is crucial to the food security of the region’s population of 10 million, whose annual fish consumption is three to four times the world average. For the rural majority, 60 to 90 percent of sea harvests are used for sustenance, while 47 percent of households depend on fishing as a main source of income.

At the regional level, the commercial fisheries sector – dominated by the tuna industry – contributes to approximately 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 80 percent of all exports in one quarter of Pacific Island states.

However these coastal fisheries are now recognised as the most threatened by over-exploitation, pollution and climate change.

In Melanesian countries like the Solomon Islands – an archipelago nation of more than 900 forest-covered islands, lying just east of Papua New Guinea – population growth, which is 2.7 percent per year, is putting major pressure on resources. It is estimated that about 55 percent of Pacific Island nations have over-exploited coral reef fisheries.

Concerns about marine pollution have been exemplified by the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, also known as the world’s largest landfill, a massive swirling gyre of 3.5 million tonnes of waste in the North Pacific Ocean.

Joeli Veitayaki, head of the School of Marine Studies at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, believes that “waste management is the biggest issue.”

“In some of the main population centres, there is no waste collection or treatment systems, while in others inappropriate methods are used. Communities and civil authorities are treating non-biodegradable and highly toxic waste as they have treated biodegradable waste,” he told IPS, adding, “Waste oil from some commercial operators is being disposed of in environmentally damaging ways that cause irreparable damage.”

The main sources of marine pollution are sewage, urban, agricultural and industrial run-off and plastic waste. In populated coastal island areas, plastic bags, containers and bottles are highly visible, suffocating marine habitats. Studies have revealed that fish in the North Pacific region are ingesting between 12,000 to 24,000 tonnes of plastic per year.

With UNICEF reporting that the average improved sanitation coverage in Oceanic countries is less than 50 percent, sewage remains a significant threat to the health of human and marine life.  Up to 25 percent of rural communities practise open defecation and piped untreated sewerage from many urban centres is discharged directly into the sea.

Future challenges to the ocean will come from climate change as increasing sea temperatures and ocean acidity are expected to drive alterations in fish populations and lead to the breakdown of coral reef systems that are important harbours of marine biodiversity.

Marine life has already been impacted by factors ranging from destructive fishing to pollution. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List of Threatened Species, Papua New Guinea has incurred the highest losses in the region, with a total of 196 endangered marine species, including 157 species of coral, 20 species of sharks and four species of turtles. This year the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) launched a regional marine species conservation programme to improve protection of dugongs, marine turtles, whales and dolphins.

Pacific Islanders who have maintained a close cultural, social and economic relationship with the sea for thousands of years acknowledge the imperative of preserving the ocean for future generations.

In 2010, recognising that “no single country in the Pacific can by itself protect its own slice of oceanic environment”, the Pacific Islands Forum launched the regional Pacific Oceanscape initiative, a strategic framework to improve ocean governance.

“So far no (Pacific Island) country has formulated a national ocean policy to guide the action and activities in its maritime zones,” Veitayaki pointed out.

But action at the national level has included the acclaimed development of Marine Managed Areas (MMAs) that incorporate customary traditions of resource access and governance. There are approximately 1,232 active MMAs in the Pacific region covering 17,000 square kilometres, with 10 percent being designated as ‘no-take zones.’

Significant Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) include the Phoenix Islands Protected Area established by the government of Kiribati – a low-lying nation in the Central Pacific Ocean comprising a coral reef and 32 atolls – and the one-million-square-kilometre Cook Islands Marine Park, currently the world’s largest.

The century ahead will witness increasing human stresses on the Pacific Ocean as islanders with limited land areas and resources turn to the sea in search of ways to boost economic development.

Burgeoning deep sea mineral exploration projects, such as the Solwara 1 project in the vicinity of Papua New Guinea, has galvanised regional debate about the potential economic windfalls versus long term environmental impacts, the dearth of knowledge about deep sea marine biodiversity and the present lack of national governance and legislative frameworks to regulate commercial activity on the seafloor.

The future success of ocean management is dependent on reliable marine scientific data and building national capacities that enable policy implementation.

“Lack of up to date data is a major hindrance as we are always reacting to problems, such as depleting fisheries, damaged coral reefs and high pollution levels,” Veitayaki explained. “If assessments were better, management could be more preventive.”

Capacity for implementation, which he acknowledges has always been a major challenge for developing nations in the region, whether in terms of financial, technical or human resources, will demand more innovative and collaborative approaches by the diverse Pacific Island peoples whose survival depends on a healthy ocean.

Antarctic Ocean Alliance activists outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin. Credit: Courtesy of George Torode

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

Everyone loves penguins, but few will know that Thursday is World Penguin Day. Fewer still are those who know penguins are threatened with extinction by climate change and giant fishing trawlers from Europe and Asia stalking the oceans around Antarctica.

Penguins are a protected species, but the factory-sized trawlers are vacuuming up the tiny shrimp-like krill that are their main food source. The Southern Ocean is also becoming increasingly acidic from emissions of fossil fuels and will have a significant impact on krill populations."It's absurd. We're going to the ends of the world to find the last few fish." -- Greenpeace's Thilo Maack

And yet efforts to create two marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean have been blocked by China, Russia and Norway.

A network of protected areas was supposed to be established last year but the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) failed to reach a consensus, said Donna Mattfield of the Antarctic Ocean Alliance, a coalition of 30 scientific and environmental organisations.

All 25 CCAMLR member nations had committed to establishing a network but could not agree on marine protected area (MPA) proposals for East Antarctica, and the Ross Sea. They previously agreed to one small MPA in the South Orkney Islands, Mattfield told IPS.

“There’s no scientific justification for not going ahead with the MPAs,” she said noting that less than two percent of the world’s oceans are under any kind of protective management.

The proposed MPAs cover several million square kilometres of the Southern Ocean with a combination of multiple use MPAs and no-take marine reserves. A final decision on these MPAs will come at a special CCAMLR meeting in Bremerhaven, Germany in July.

“The Southern Ocean is under increasing pressure from climate change and resource extraction, but areas such as the Ross Sea and East Antarctica are amongst the least impacted, healthiest, and most beautiful oceans in the world. They are one of the last remaining wildernesses on the planet and deemed a necessary ‘living laboratory’ by scientists”, said Onno Gross, a marine biologist and director of Deepwave, an ocean conservation NGO.

Of the world’s 18 penguin species, 13 are now so threatened they need special protection. In the last few years, factory trawlers have made their way to the remote Southern Ocean to catch krill for the fast-growing trade to supply krill as fish meal for farmed salmon.

More recently, krill are being used to supply the booming health food and pharmaceutical markets for omega-3 three fatty acids believed to prevent heart disease and inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.

“Omega-3 three fatty acids can be obtained from plants. We don’t need them from fish,” says Thilo Maack of Greenpeace.

Europeans are subsidising the construction of supertrawlers that are plundering the oceans off West Africa and now the Southern Ocean because there aren’t enough fish left in European waters, Maack told IPS.

He knows of at least two German-built supertrawlers that are fishing krill. “It’s absurd. We’re going to the ends of the world to find the last few fish. We haven’t learned from our mistakes,” he said.

CCAMLR has set a krill quota of 400,000 tonnes and some 50 trawlers now ply the cold and dangerous waters. Just last week in the Ross Sea, a Chinese supertrawler caught fire and its crew of nearly 100 had to rescued. Luckily the trawler did not leak its thousand tonnes of diesel fuel.

Not a great deal is known about Antarctic krill populations. They are believed to exist in the hundreds of millions of tonnes. However the Southern Ocean is undergoing rapid changes. Krill larvae feed on algae living on the bottom of sea ice, which is rapidly dwindling around the Antarctic Peninsula with rising temperatures.

According to one estimate, the number of krill in the Southern Ocean may have dropped by 80 percent since the 1970s.

CO2 emissions from fossil fuels has made seawater is 30 percent more acidic than 50 years ago. These acid waters weaken or dissolve the shells of many creatures like sea snails. This is already happening in parts of the Southern Ocean. Krill will also be affected especially as acidification worsens with more CO2 emissions, says Maack.

Without major emissions cuts, large parts of the Southern Ocean will be too acidic for shell-forming species, including most plankton and krill, by 2040, oceanographer Carol Turley from Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK previously told IPS.

“We are hoping Germany as host of the special CCAMLR meeting in July will push China, Russia and Norway into agreeing to the two proposed MPAs,” Maack said.

There is a lot riding on this decision Mattfield believes. “It’s an opportunity to create the biggest protected area in history,” she said.