In January 2024 C.E., the small Pacific island nation of Palau made history by becoming the first country in the world to formally ratify the High Seas Treaty — a landmark international agreement designed to protect the vast stretches of ocean that lie beyond any single country’s control. The United Nations announced the milestone on January 22, 2024 C.E., marking a turning point in a nearly two-decade effort to bring the open ocean under meaningful legal protection.
At a glance
- High Seas Treaty: Also known as the BBNJ (biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction) agreement, it creates a legal framework for governing ocean areas that cover two-thirds of the world’s oceans — of which only 1% is currently protected.
- Marine protected areas: The treaty mandates the creation of MPAs on the high seas, requiring environmental impact assessments and obligating nations to share genetic material from ocean organisms that could benefit humanity.
- Ratification threshold: Once 60 countries formally ratify the agreement, it becomes binding international law — a target that ocean advocates believed was achievable by June 2025 C.E.
Why Palau led the way
Palau is a nation of roughly 340 islands in the western Pacific, and its entire economy and culture are built around the sea. Tourism, fishing, and marine biodiversity are not abstract policy concerns there — they are the daily reality of island life.
“We’re an ocean country,” said Ilana Seid, Palau’s permanent representative to the U.N. “The ocean drives significant parts of our GDP, and we think that ocean governance needs to be thought of as a whole.”
Palau had already been walking the walk long before this moment. In 2015 C.E., Palau passed the Palau National Marine Sanctuary Act, which protected 80% of its exclusive economic zone from extractive activities like fishing and mining. That makes Palau’s EEZ the most fully protected of any nation on Earth by percentage, and fifth in the world by total protected area — roughly 477,418 square kilometers. When Seid says the high seas cannot be governed piecemeal, she speaks from a country that has already committed to governing its own waters seriously.
The open ocean problem
The high seas — international waters beyond any country’s jurisdiction — make up two-thirds of the planet’s oceans. For most of human history, they have been treated as a commons with few rules. The result is significant overfishing, habitat destruction, and gaps in biodiversity monitoring across the largest continuous ecosystem on Earth.
The BBNJ agreement, approved by U.N. member states in March 2023 C.E. after nearly 20 years of negotiation, is designed to change that. It creates a legal mechanism for establishing marine protected areas in international waters, sets requirements for environmental impact assessments before industrial activities can proceed, and establishes rules for sharing the benefits of ocean genetic resources — the microbes, plants, and animals in the deep sea that could one day yield medicines, materials, or other innovations.
Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, said Palau’s leadership came as no surprise. “Palau has been a champion of the High Seas Treaty and active in the global movement to improve protection of the ocean and halt the climate crisis,” she told Mongabay.
Deep-sea mining and the stakes ahead
One of the most urgent tests for the treaty will be deep-sea mining. The International Seabed Authority — the U.N.-mandated body that governs mining in international waters — has been edging toward issuing commercial mining licenses in the open ocean, an activity that scientists warn could cause irreversible damage to seafloor ecosystems before they are even fully documented.
Palau has been outspoken on this front. In June 2022 C.E., the nation announced its support for a moratorium on deep-sea mining and helped build an alliance of nations taking the same position. While the High Seas Treaty would not outright ban deep-sea mining, it would require greater transparency in environmental assessments and mandate cooperation between the ISA and treaty parties when new protected areas are proposed.
“We’re constantly trying to advocate in the international community that the ocean doesn’t have borders,” Seid said, “and we have to treat it as a collective whole.”
A growing wave of support
Palau was first, but not alone for long. On January 16, 2024 C.E., Chile’s Senate voted unanimously to ratify the treaty, with the president expected to deposit the instrument shortly after. The Maldives was also preparing its ratification. By the time of Palau’s announcement, 85 countries had signed the agreement — a strong foundation heading toward the 60 ratifications needed for it to enter into force.
Hubbard expressed confidence that the 60-country threshold would be reached by June 2025 C.E., ahead of the next U.N. Ocean Conference in Nice, France.
Still, ratification is not the same as enforcement. Even once the treaty enters into force, implementing new marine protected areas on the high seas will require sustained political will, monitoring capacity, and cooperation among nations with competing economic interests. The gap between signing a treaty and changing behavior on the water has derailed ambitious ocean agreements before.
But for now, Palau’s act of ratification carries real weight — not just as a legal formality, but as a statement from one of the world’s smallest nations that the ocean is not a resource to be carved up, but a shared inheritance to be protected.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Ghana establishes a new marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- U.K. cancer death rates fall to their lowest level on record
- The Good News for Humankind archive on marine conservation
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