At UN Conference, Countries Inch Towards Ocean Protection Goal

More Protected Areas Pledged But Funding and Action to Meet Target Still Lacking

- Delger Erdenesanaa and Daphne Angles

NICE, France — Remote coral atolls in the Caribbean. Habitat for threatened sharks and rays around a Tanzanian island in the Indian Ocean. And 900,000 sq km of the Pacific Ocean around French Polynesia.

These are some of the stretches of water now set aside as part of an international goal to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030. More than 20 new marine protected areas were announced at the third United Nations Ocean Conference, which ended on June 13 in France.

Countries and territories pledging new areas included Chile, Colombia, French Polynesia, Portugal, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, the Solomon Islands, Tanzania and Vanuatu.

"Protecting the ocean is beginning to become fashionable," said Dr Sylvia Earle, a marine biologist and oceanographer who served as chief scientist of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the 1990s, at an event celebrating a network of protected areas around the Azores.

The new designations come at a time when the US, which sent only two observers to the conference, has moved to reopen the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. The country is also seeking to unilaterally authorize mining of the seafloor in international waters.

More than 60 world leaders attended the June 9 to 13 conference, with the UN saying the world faced an emergency over the health of the oceans. More than 170 nations adopted a political declaration at the end of the gathering calling for urgent action.