2023-10-27 17:07:00
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, comprising 26 countries and the EU, has failed to reach an agreement to establish new marine protected areas. This despite the disappearance of ice at the South Pole, NGOs announced on Friday
The Commission (CCAMLR) met in Australia without succeeding in agreeing on the establishment of three new marine protected areas (MPA), sanctuaries around Antarctica, which would have protected human activities. an area of four million km2, according to WWF and Greenpeace.
This project, if it had been successful, would have been the largest in the history of ocean protection.
Unprecedented warming
‘It is frustrating that discussions on MPAs have continued for decades and extremely disappointing that CCAMLR has once again been unable to make significant progress, particularly after a year of unprecedented and worrying climate change. ‘Antarctica,’ said WWF Antarctic Conservation Officer Emily Grilly.
The CCAMLR, which regulates fishing activities, brings together the United States, China, Russia, Great Britain, France, India and Japan. She had not published a press release on the results of her meeting as of late Friday afternoon.
China, Russia and Chile block
These marine protected areas were first proposed in 2010, and their size was reduced in 2017, in order to garner support from more countries. But their creation has been persistently blocked by China and Russia, who invoke fishing rights, and recently by Chile.
The NGOs expressed the hope that the Commission would not remain inactive given the accelerated melting of Antarctic ice and ‘massive deaths of vulnerable species’ observed in the area.
The impasse is all the more regrettable since the UN adopted in June a historic treaty to protect the high seas, to protect marine ecosystems vital to humanity, noted Greenpeace.
‘The Commission can still agree on new licenses for fishing, but cannot agree on the concrete means to move forward regarding protection,’ regretted Jehki Harkonen, in charge of the ocean to Greenpeace International, pointing to a ‘new failed meeting’.
Little emperor penguins are drowning
Marine protected areas aim to limit human activities, particularly fishing, in the areas concerned, to help species there resist climatic upheavals.
The surface area of the Antarctic ice shelf has never been so reduced since scientific surveys began 45 years ago, the leading American observatory, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), said in September.
The consequences for wildlife are already evident. A scientific study published in August revealed a ‘major failure in the reproduction of emperor penguins’ in several colonies due to the melting of the sea ice, with the chicks having drowned when the ice gave way under their paws.
Of five colonies monitored in the Bellingshausen Sea region of western Antarctica, all but one suffered a ‘catastrophic’ 100% loss of chicks, the researchers reported in Communications: Earth & Environment, a journal of the Springer Nature group.
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