An agreement banning commercial fishing in Arctic waters for the next sixteen years has been reached by the European Union, the United States and seven other nations. Scientific research will be carried out in the area during this period.
Commercial fishing in the Arctic Ocean has been banned for the next sixteen years. This will make it possible to carry out more in-depth research into the local ecosystem and the species that inhabit it, in order to understand what threatens them and which could be farmed in a sustainable manner. This is the agreement reached by the European Union, the United States, Canada, China, Iceland, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Russia and the Danish territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands following a meeting held in Washington (United States) from 28 to 30 November 2017.
The agreement will be signed by the individual countries after being reviewed and translated into the various languages, and aims to protect an area of 2.8 million square kilometres, roughly equivalent to the extent of the Mediterranean Sea. This zone has never been affected by commercial fishing due to its inaccessibility, but global warming and the resulting melting of the ice are creating the conditions for the situation to change. The surface area of available water is in fact increasing all the time, and in summer the ice layer is thinner, allowing greater penetration of sunlight. This leads to greater proliferation of plankton, the collective of aquatic organisms that forms the basis of the marine food chain.
Read also: Cosa sono i cambiamenti climatici, cause e conseguenze
The waters of the Arctic Ocean are international, so without an agreement establishing limitations fishing would be entirely unregulated. "The delegations understood the value of waiting until there is sufficient scientific data available, and a management plan for the area," said David Balton, chair of the negotiations.
The environmental organisation Ocean Conservancy also welcomed the news, highlighting the uniqueness of a measure in which science has been placed first. The agreement will remain in force for sixteen years and will then be renewed every five, unless a nation withdraws and until the data collected is sufficient.
Canada's Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Dominic LeBlanc, assured that indigenous organisations were also included in the negotiations, among them the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and that the final text recognises their value in the decision-making process and the need for their involvement in the realisation of the project.
There are certainly commercial interests behind the commitment of the nations that will sign the agreement, but this does not detract from the fact that it represents an important step in favour of the protection of the Arctic and its species, and an opportunity to study them in greater depth in order to ensure their conservation.