El acuerdo sobre la diversidad biológica marina en zonas fuera de la jurisdicción nacionalun análisis preliminar

Abstract

On March 4, 2023, after 20 years of work, including 6 years of formal negotiations and 36 uninterrupted hours of final consultations behind closed doors, the negotiation of the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (the BBNJ Agreement) has come to a successful conclusion. The Agreement aims to fill the remaining gaps in the international regime for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction, i.e. in the waters of the high seas, where the principle of freedom of the sea applies, and in the sea-bed Area, which constitutes a common heritage of humankind. Areas beyond national jurisdiction account for almost two-thirds of the world's oceans and are home to a biological wealth whose conservation is facing increasing threats and which is not regulated by the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity or its supplementary protocols. The enormous difficulties that have arisen during the negotiations of the Agreement have been resolved through normative binomials that provide common ground to meet the competing claims of developed and developing countries: conservation and sustainable use, free access to marine genetic resources and fair and equitable benefit-sharing, area-based management tools and marine protected areas, common heritage of mankind and freedom of the high seas.... But to achieve the objectives of the Agreement, the Conference of the Parties will have to undertake the difficult mission of reconciling the environmental objective of conserving biological biodiversity and the economic objective of sustainable use of marine genetic resources.