International small step

There’s hope yet for Planet Earth. Representatives of 70 nations along with oil companies and major shipping lines have agreed in principle on a plan to stabilize oceans, limit exploitation and preserve habitats for marine life.

It’s remarkable in itself that UN members— who rarely agree on anything—have been able to reach a framework for protecting the oceans from further man-made harm. The oceanic areas mapped out for protection belong to no country. That means no country has an automatic right to exploit marine life or mineral riches beneath the sea floor.

Conversely, no nation has an automatic right to tell other nations what they may or may not do in an area where no nation holds jurisdiction. That’s why the only way to protect the oceans is for all nations to agree that this is necessary for the good of the world.

Without regulation, industrial fishing fleets from countries like China fan out thousands of miles from their own shores to catch, process and package massive quantities of marine life for consumer markets. They are fishing the oceans to death. When careless people throw plastic bottles into a gutter or stream, or when the streets flood and sweep away all the scattered litter, or when a massive tsunami or hurricane washes away entire coastal towns, that debris makes its way into the oceans.

The agreements reached in Panama set a low bar: conserving only 30 percent of the ocean by 2030. And all that is conditional on an international treaty, which could take years more to negotiate and more years to win legislative ratification.

And, as Americans learned with the Paris Climate Accord, all it takes is one change of U.S. administration to scuttle everything.