The once and future treaty: Towards a new regime for biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction

Access to Marine Genetic Resources (MGR): Raising Awareness of Best-Practice Through a New Agreement for Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ)

“…The BBNJ treaty has at least significant capacity to be of benefit to the science community with its global scope, and considering that the negotiations so far have proved to be constructive in the main part (Tiller et al, 2019), and acknowledging the important role of science in any governance mechanism for ABNJ. Here, we provide recommendations which could contribute to treaty discussions, addressing how to strengthen best-practice, to support access, sharing and transparency in relation to MGR.…”

“…These negotiations, also known as the BBNJ process, are focussed on four main components: marine genetic resources (MGR), area-based management tools, capacity building and technology transfer, and environmental impact assessments (Tiller et al, 2019). Taxonomy provides a unifying element to all of these components: as MGRs are in essence marine biodiversity, environmental impact assessments require knowledge of the species that live in a habitat being impacted/under assessment, and area based management tools depend on knowledge of species connectivity to inform spatial planning as require knowledge of the biodiversity present in a given region.…”

Gaps in Protection of Important Ocean Areas: A Spatial Meta-Analysis of Ten Global Mapping Initiatives

“…There is growing interest in management of ABNJ and negotiations are underway to develop legally binding conservation measures for these areas under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (UN General Assembly Resolution 72/249; Heffernan, 2018;Wright et al, 2018;Tiller et al, 2019). A focus of these negotiations is area-based management.…”

“…A focus of these negotiations is area-based management. To date, ABNJ MPAs have only been possible through sectoral organization designation, including designations by CCAMLR or the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (the OSPAR Convention) (Smith and Jabour, 2017;Tiller et al, 2019). A unified selection process has been noted as a need for the establishment of ABNJ MPAs (Smith and Jabour, 2017), and our study highlights over 76 million km 2 of unprotected ABNJ that have already been identified as important and that can act as a starting point for future deliberations.…”

Antarctica and Abnj in the Anthropocene: Challenges to the Sustainable Management of Marine Genetic Resources?

“…The debate about the status of marine genetic resources has been positioned within different international forums and legal instruments, for instance, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); the International Seabed Authority (ISA); the United Nations Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea (UNICPLOS); the Antarctic Treaty Meetings; the annual debates of the United Nations General Assembly on Oceans and the Law of the Sea. More recently, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) created the Ad Hoc Open-ended Informal Working Group to study issues relating to the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction (LEARY et al, 2009;TILLER et al, 2019). Under the UN auspices, intergovernmental conferences aim to draft an international legal binding instrument by 2020.…”