UN treaty to protect ‘extraordinary’ marine life due to come into force

World-first pact aims to protect 10 million species from threats such as climate change, overfishing and deep-sea mining.

A landmark United Nations treaty protecting marine diversity in international waters is due to enter into force, after 81 governments agreed to include it in their national laws.

In total, 148 countries, representing more than three-quarters of all UN member states, have signed on to the High Seas Treaty since it was adopted in June 2023.

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Countries that have fully ratified the treaty in their national laws include island nations such as Palau, Cuba and the Maldives, as well as some of the world’s biggest economies, including China, Germany, Japan, France and Brazil.

Coming into force on Saturday and officially known as the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), the treaty offers new protections to an area covering two-thirds of the world’s oceans and as many as 10 million different species, many of which are still unidentified.

Rebecca Hubbard, the director of the High Seas Alliance, a nongovernmental organisation that supports the treaty, said the agreement offers a means to protect an “extraordinary part of our planet”.

“The High Seas are full of life, from tiny plankton all the way up to the great whales that rely on them,” Hubbard said in a statement.

“We’re only just beginning to understand how important this vast, interconnected world is for the health of our entire planet,” she said.

“Whether it’s underwater mountains, deep-sea plains and trenches, the icy polar waters, or the open-ocean highways that migratory species travel, the High Seas are as vital as they are immense,” she added.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has previously described the treaty as “a lifeline for the ocean and humanity”, as it faces threats including “climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution”.

“Covering more than two-thirds of the ocean, the agreement sets binding rules to conserve and sustainably use marine biodiversity, share benefits more fairly, create protected areas, and advance science and capacity-building,” Guterres said last year, urging governments that had yet to ratify to do so soon.

The United States, which signed on to the agreement in 2023, is one of a number of holdouts, alongside India, the United Kingdom and Russia, according to a list of signatories maintained by the UN.

Countries that have signed on but have yet to ratify the treaty are not legally obliged to fulfil its requirements, but are meant to refrain from activities that are contradictory to the treaty’s objectives.

US President Donald Trump has announced that his country plans to withdraw from a wide range of UN conventions and treaties, although it did not include the High Seas Treaty in a list of 66 UN and international organisations it plans to leave, released last month.

Trump has also signed a controversial order to boost deep-sea mining, promised to expand offshore drilling for oil, and sunk an agreement to clean up polluting fuels in global shipping.