Brief Note by Kip Hansen — 10 March 2023

Environmental and climate news is full of headlines like these:

UN forges historic deal to protect ocean life: what researchers think

IMO Welcomes New Oceans Treaty To Protect Marine Biodiversity On The High Seas

New Historic UN Treaty on Oceans Can Help Climate Action

At Last, a New Deal for the High Seas

Nations Agree on Language for Historic Treaty to Protect Ocean Life

There is only one tiny problem – only the last headline is true.

Surprisingly, it is the NY Time’s Catrin Einhorn (repeating the link) that gets the news right.

There is no treaty.  Let me re-word that:

There Is No New Treaty.

Not a single nation has approved or signed a new treaty.

What?  Wait….if there is no new treaty, if there is no treaty at all, what are all the headlines about?

“After two decades of planning and talks that culminated in a grueling race over the past few days in New York, a significant majority of nations agreed on language for a historic United Nations treaty that would protect ocean biodiversity.” [ source – NY Times  – yes, repeated link ]

And  (kudos to Catrin Einhorn):

“However, there is still a way to go before the treaty can take effect. The next major step would be for countries to formally adopt the language, which was settled on Saturday night. Then, nations would need to ratify the treaty itself, which often requires legislative approval.”

No country, so far, has gone through the necessary steps to formally  accept the language merely agreed  upon (by a significant majority of nations), decided upon the exact language that such a treaty might take for their country, no country has ratified such a treaty.

Bottom Line:

1.  There is no treaty.

Despite all the hullabaloo, there is no treaty as yet…and no one knows when such a treaty might be finalized and accepted by a sufficient number of nations to make it enforceable.

2.   How exactly the proposed treaty can be touted as a climate change treaty is left unexplained even by those claiming it is so.

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Author’s Comment:

It seems that the still-only-hoped-for Oceans Treaty is a climate treaty in the same way the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) is climate legislation; that is, only in the minds of activists, desperate for climate action.

Thanks for reading.

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