Chancellor Diana Mondino signed a key agreement in New York to combat unregulated fishing beyond mile 200. This tool allows, once implemented, the creation of maritime protection areas on the high seas, such as what could happen at the edge of the Argentine Sea, an area of intense fishing pressure without any control, says the statement sent by the Environmental Policy Circle.
This is the United Nations agreement on the Law of the Sea relating to the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, also known as BBNJ for its acronym in English. Argentina now joins the 90 countries that have already signed it.
The Agreement, signed on June 19, 2023, has as its pillars the fair and equitable distribution of the benefits of marine genetic resources; environmental impact assessments; capacity building and marine technology transfer; and the implementation of area-based management tools, including marine protected areas.
“This agreement is fundamental to protect and advance the responsible exploitation of marine resources that are the heritage of humanity and on which South American countries largely depend,” said Milko Schvartzman, head of the Oceans Program at the Environmental Policy Circle. .
“From the organizations that have been working for years for its entry into force, we recognize this important step towards the conservation of the marine resources of the South Atlantic and the entire planet,” says Schvartzman in the same statement in which they say that the Argentina “was a protagonist in the genesis of the BBNJ and in the crucial processes in which the UN decided to advance an agreement of this scale.”
But they also propose that the next step that must be taken is for Argentina to advance “in the internal ratification process, so that the Agreement can come into force and it is possible to create really effective Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in international waters” and they add that the BBNJ “excludes any possibility of discretionary interpretations relating to sovereignty conflicts,” which should facilitate the ratification process.
Martina Sasso, founder of the NGO “Por el Mar”, assured that “this framework gives Argentina the possibility of proposing a marine protected area outside national jurisdiction that allows it to put an end to the plundering of our fisheries at the hands of more than 500 foreign ships”
Having a diplomatic tool to put a stop to fishing in Mile 201 from a biological point of view is essential, because as mentioned in this statement and as all scientific and legal experts have said, Argentina is one of the countries most affected by IUU fishing carried out by hundreds of vessels from China, South Korea, Taiwan and Spain. Because the effect of deep sea fishing on the ecosystem is the same inside or outside our Exclusive Economic Zone.
