The European Union could be key to preserving Antarctica’s pristine waters, with the timing ripe this year to gain global agreement for three new Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean.
Macquarie University Associate Professor Nengye Liu will this week present to the European Parliament, advising the Members of the Parliament and high-level EU officials how to effectively engage with China to secure proposed new conservation zones to protect vital marine ecosystems in Antarctica.
“Rising geopolitical tensions between China and the West in recent years have become a new obstacle preventing China from supporting any Southern Ocean Marine Protected Area proposals,” says Liu, who is Director of the Centre for Environmental Law at Macquarie University.
The EU and Australia jointly proposed a new East Antarctic Marine Protected Area (MPA) in 2012, but for the past nine years have failed to secure crucial votes from China and Russia.
In October, China is due to host the 15th Conference of the Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity, a treaty committing the global community to ‘sustain life on earth’.
“The conference is an important occasion to determine a post-2020 Global Framework to guide the international community over biodiversity conservation in the next decade,” Liu says.
“It is also a good opportunity for China, as the host country, to showcase its leadership in global biodiversity conservation.”
Liu says the timing is significant as this conference takes place shortly before the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) where proposals for three new Antarctic MPAs will be decided.
“The conference could be an excellent backdrop for China to announce its support for proposed Antarctic MPAs – so 2021 could be a good year to turn this around,” Liu says.
Despite Australia’s strong presence in Antarctica, Liu says increasingly frosty relations between China and Australia mean the EU is needed to wield more influence on China.
The East Antarctic MPA would protect around one million square kilometres across three zones critical for habitat and foraging for whales, penguins, birds and other wildlife.
The proposed MPA provides scientific reference zones to help research the impacts of climate change on these ecosystems and the effects of fishing outside the MPAs.
Growth in commercial krill fishing, increasing tourism numbers and warming and acidifying waters all threaten the marine life and their habitats in the ocean around Antarctica.
The Southern Ocean makes up about 10 per cent of the world’s ocean surface and drives global ocean currents vital for life on earth, but was not protected by the Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1959 to preserve the continent for peaceful purposes.
Marine Protected Areas are growing in significance as the global community recognises the precarity of ocean habitats – and while less than three per cent of our oceans are currently under protection, there are goals to preserve 30 per cent of the world’s oceans by 2030.
In 2016, the world’s largest MPA was established in the Ross Sea, protecting 1.57 million square kilometres of the Southern Ocean from commercial fishing for 35 years.
This followed the 2009 declaration of an MPA on 90,000 square kilometres around the South Orkney Islands.
There are also proposals for two other MPAs in the Southern Ocean, one in the Weddell Sea and another alongside the Antarctic Peninsula.
Macquarie University