Protecting international waters will not stop the extraction of oil or minerals from the seabed.

BarcelonaHe Oceans Treaty, which was agreed in 2023 to protect international waters, it cannot be implemented until it has been ratified by 60 countries. And so far, two years later, only 50 have done so. This week, delegations from 175 UN governments met in Nice for the grand Ocean Summit, which had this as one of the main outstanding issues. And although the summit ended without the 60 signatures, the host of the meeting assured that yes, all the necessary ratifications are committed and will become effective on September 23, in "an official ceremony" at UN headquarters in New York. This was stated this Friday by Olivier Poivre de Arvor, France's special envoy for the oceans, who asserted that this was "a great victory" for the Nice Conference, especially "considering that the United States is withdrawing from everything" and has also disengaged from this negotiation. However, the future ratification of the treaty – which would come into force in early 2026 – will not prevent oil exploitation or deep-sea mining, nor even practices as destructive as bottom trawling, according to the final declaration agreed in Nice.

Environmental NGOs acting as observers in these negotiations have expressed their disappointment with The Nice Declaration, the eight-page document with 34 commitments agreed upon at this summit. These are 34 commitments that seek to protect marine ecosystems without making any explicit mention of fossil fuels, which are responsible for the main threat to the world's oceans, according to scientists: the climate crisis. "One of the main causes that is literally killing our oceans is climate change caused by our unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels, but no country has dared to defend the need to adopt, at least, a ban on new exploitation of hydrocarbon deposits in the sea," denounced Carlos Bravo, observing Carlos Bravo, observing Carlos Bravo. There is no consensus to prohibit new exploitations either at sea or on land, nor to gradually close existing ones, a scientific battle that governments increasingly seem to give up.

This criticism has been repeated insistently among the representatives of civil and scientific society present in Nice. It took 28 years for the UN climate negotiations to achieve the expression fossil fuels appeared in his texts: he did for the first time in the final declaration of COP28But even after this milestone, UN climate and environmental diplomacy has failed to keep the flame alive. At last year's summit, COP29, the mention had already been removed"Climate change and changes in the oceans are two sides of the same coin, and so this is a significant shortcoming here as well," explains Remi Parmentier of the Varda Group, a veteran observer of these negotiations, by telephone from Nice. However, the high level of this conference, attended by 28 heads of state and government, stands out, as it represents a significant shift in the perception of the crisis on an international scale.

For the oceans, which capture 26% of CO emissions₂ man-made, and increasingly saturated with this carbon dioxide, the temperature rise caused by the fossil fuel industry is lethal. But the lack of such mention is not the only "disappointment" of the Nice Declaration. The text also "makes no reference to the problem of extractivism, which is the root problem of ocean degradation," says Parmentier, including overfishing. Despite the fact that the French government representative himself assured in a press conference that "trawling should disappear," this point is not included in the text either, and there is not even a consensus on it within the European Union. "It is regrettable that the need to abandon destructive and non-selective fishing practices such as trawling, especially in the areas protected, which will not really be so as long as trawling is allowed," adds the Varda Group representative.

The Nice declaration also does not oppose deep seabed mining, but simply calls for "robust rules, regulations and procedures for the exploitation of minerals in this area." At least 3 against deep-sea mining, a still-experimental type of exploitation strongly discouraged by science. But many other countries, starting with the United States, are instead investing in them.

However, there are some positive outcomes from these days' summit. One of them is the Call for an ambitious Plastics Treaty, a text signed by 96 countries that aims to put pressure on the summit scheduled for this August in Geneva, where this agreement against plastic pollution is expected to be finally approved. At the last summit on plastics, the producing countries—the fossil fuel industry itself— they blocked the agreement because they don't want it to include measures to reduce plastic production.

The NGOs also recognize as positive the commitment to ratify the Oceans Treaty, the name by which the Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) is known. According to sources at the summit, 50 countries have already ratified it, 6 have completed the ratification process, and 12 have committed to doing so before the summit convened for September 23 in New York, which will be the official ratification ceremony. When questioned by the press, Poivre insisted that these promises are not just words and that ratifications are assured. This is important because the agreement signed in 2023 will not enter into force—and, therefore, will not be binding—until 120 days after being ratified by 60 countries. If this occurs on September 23, the treaty would enter into force at the beginning of next year. In these 120 days, the UN will have to create the governance and decision-making structures, the corresponding technical and scientific bodies, and the mechanisms for their financing. The objective of the treaty is to establish (and monitor) protected areas in international waters, those that belong to no one but occupy 64% of the oceans and are currently divided into zones of economic influence of several fishing governments.