Help Canada Ratify the High Seas Treaty by 2025

The ocean doesn’t recognize borders.

In March 2023, countries worldwide made history when they finalized the United Nations Treaty for Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, otherwise known as the High Seas Treaty. This legally binding agreement fills critical gaps for the protection of the high seas and allows countries to:

• Establish protected areas in international waters
• Manage activities previously unbeholden to impact assessments or monitoring
• Manage marine genetic resources and share benefits from them
• Work together to increase scientific understanding of the high seas

The high seas make up ⅔ of our global ocean. They provide us with oxygen and food and regulate much of our climate. But the ocean is facing unprecedented challenges. Overfishing, pollution, shipping, and climate change make it harder for the ocean to recover and thrive. Nascent industries like deep sea mining and potential geoengineering projects threaten to increase the burden on an already overburdened ocean.

We can’t be healthy without a healthy ocean. For the treaty to come into force, 60 countries must ratify it. As of now, only 4 have.

If we are to help protect our global ocean, we need at least 56 more countries to ratify the High Seas Treaty as soon as possible.

With the longest coastline in the world and bordering three international ocean basins, Canada’s involvement is vital to the future of our shared ocean. Canada must ratify the treaty by June 2025 in time for the next United Nations Ocean Conference.

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