At its special meeting in Santiago de Chile, the International Antarctic Commission was unable to agree on the designation of new marine protected areas. China and Russia in particular prevented the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) conference in the Chilean capital from reaching a consensus on three new protected areas in the Southern Ocean, environmental organizations said after the meeting on Friday (local time) with.
“Scientific studies show that the protection of the Southern Ocean is becoming increasingly urgent. Unfortunately, this special session ended as the previous six annual sessions ended: with two countries blocking the process of the other 25 CCAMLR members making progress towards a network of Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean,” said Andrea Kavanagh, Director of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Conservation at the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project.
The USA, the EU, Great Britain, Australia, Norway, Uruguay, New Zealand, India, South Korea, Ukraine, Argentina and Chile had the designation of three protected areas in East Antarctica, the Weddell Sea and the Antarctic Peninsula with a total area of around four million square kilometers suggested. This corresponds to about one percent of the world’s oceans.
“The CCAMLR plays the most important role in protecting the southern ocean. For more than eleven years, it has not achieved its goal of establishing a representative network of marine protected areas,” said Sascha Müller-Kraenner, Federal Director of the German Environmental Aid. “We urgently need engagement at the highest political level in upcoming CCAMLR meetings to move forward on the designation of the existing three marine protected area proposals.”
Read in our archive at stern: The sea ice researcher Stefanie Arndt is investigating how global warming is changing the polar regions forever. The effects are affecting the entire planet.
