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As the United Nations Ocean Conference opens in Nice, all eyes are on the co-host, France (paired with Costa Rica), and its president Emmanuel Macron, who has expressed high ambitions for the summit though he struggles to discipline a powerful domestic fishing industry which trawls the seabed in 98 per cent of France’s marine protected areas. The summit, the third such UN event to address a “global emergency” facing the ocean, comes midway in a decade crucial for the protection of nature thanks to the many goals that need to be come into force by 2030, principal among them the inclusion of 30 per cent of land and sea in credible protected areas. France, with the second largest territorial waters in the world and plans to ban bottom trawling in only a fraction of them, therefore finds itself under international scrutiny as never before, especially since devastating scenes of the damage caused to the seabed and the creatures living on it by bottom trawling were screened in the film Ocean with David Attenborough last month. Whether President Macron’s speech to the plenary can confront his domestic dilemmas and show ocean leadership will be the main curiosity of Monday, the conference’s first day.
Macron was upstaged at the weekend by the UK’s Environment Secretary, Steve Reed, who promised to ban trawling across 41 marine protected areas (MPAs) in English seas – a promise that, it is worth pointing out, leaves Scotland as well as France far behind. Given that France has lodged a complaint with Britain before, when it was prevented from trawling UK protected areas in the Channel, this is a brave and timely announcement by Reed which may be seen as a rebuke to France and any other EU nations that do not enforce the shared habitats protection laws that the UK still retains from EU law in unaltered form. Within the EU, Sweden and Greece are committed to trawling bans in MPAs by 2030, but the EU effectively remains split, with its fishing nations refusing to apply its own laws.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, will be presenting EU’s lacklustre Ocean Pact in Nice, which makes much of upholding existing legislation on protecting habitats and species and on nature restoration – all of which either already makes it illegal to bottom trawl in protected areas or in any case by 2030. The Commission recently received complaints from NGOs about bottom-trawling in MPAs in six countries, including France, and will be under pressure to issue infraction proceedings against them, so even if Macron fluffs it this week, in the end France may have no choice in the matter.
All the other 70-odd other heads of state arriving in Nice will be expected to say what they are doing to support the establishment of effective marine protected areas by 2030. The President of French Polynesia, Moetai Brotherson, is coming, and he has already confirmed the creation of a huge marine protected area and two strict protection zones in the French area of influence to spare President Macron’s blushes. “It will be one of the largest marine protected areas in the world,” Macron told Le Marin at the weekend.
World leaders will also be expected to bring something to the feast in the way of pledges on two other pressing issues, first the ratification of the treaty creating marine reserves on the High Seas, without which protection of 30 per cent of the global ocean cannot be achieved. So far there have been 22 ratifications out of the 60 needed for the treaty to come into force. Ratification usually requires domestic legislation, so cannot be achieved overnight, but countries such as the UK who have yet to ratify will be under pressure to their timetables for this happening. Expect to hear whether this will be in the King’s Speech.
The third area of expectation for world leaders – and one where Macron is more comfortable – is the development of an international coalition on seabed mining, currently not permitted under international law – but which US President Donald Trump has decided to permit in US waters in defiance of international law. Macron is credited by many environmentalists for his leadership on backing a moratorium at the last UN Ocean conference in Lisbon two years ago. So we may look forward to a lot more from him on the coalition in favour of a moratorium he set up then. This is a coalition, it is worth mentioning, that the UK has yet to join.
What can be expected as an outcome this week? Cape Verde and Australia have the difficult job of pulling together a declaration but if the past is anything to go by, the most lasting and memorable impetus is most likely to come from ambitious announcements from independent coastal states in unexpected parts of the world. These often put the big blocs to shame, as the UK did at the weekend. Last time, in Lisbon, it was Latin America announcing huge, linked protected areas. Competition in meeting shared goals is how the world inches forward. We await progress this time.
