Washington — It is a hectic week for UN environmental conservation talks with simultaneous meetings occurring around the world: Climate change negotiations are entering their second week in Baku, Azerbaijan and the G20 takes place in Rio de Janeiro November 18-19--so, it's understandable other important issues could get lost in the mix.
But that doesn't mean they are any less deserving of attention. Consider the effort to protect the Southern Ocean, the vast and icy body of water encircling Antarctica and home to the world's largest populations of krill, a shrimp-like crustacean that penguins, seals, whales, and seabirds depend on for food.
Last month, while delegates to the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Biological Framework met for the first time to take stock of their goal to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, talks at the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) in Hobart, Tasmania collapsed over a dispute about krill fishing limits, casting uncertainty over the group's commitment to establish a representative network of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Southern Ocean.
While the outcome barely made headlines, which is typically the case for CCAMLR meetings, scientists are now bracing for summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Last July, at the peak of the antipodean winter, a heat wave swept Antarctica with temperatures around 25 degrees Celsius above the winter average.
The anomaly follows nearly a decade of decreases in the average maximum extent of sea ice with potentially catastrophic implications for global sea level rise and the region's fragile ecosystems.
For example, iconic emperor penguin populations have been exhibiting a disconcerting response to the unprecedented changes. The species relies almost exclusively on sea ice as a breeding habitat and forages on krill. If the current warming trend continues unabated, the penguins face a decline of over 90 percent this century.
A 2023 study found that ocean warming and acidification are impacting krill behavior and population dynamics in the Southern Ocean, including a southward migration toward colder waters. A drop in krill numbers not only threatens the region's megafauna that depend on it, but also the global carbon cycle.
It is estimated that the region's krill sequester around 23 million tonnes of the heat-trapping gas, equivalent to carbon services provided by the planet's blue carbon habitats, marshes, mangroves, and seagrass.
Moreover, a CCAMLR report published earlier this year documented a steady increase in the amount of krill harvested over the past decade.
The annual average landings of krill from 2019 to 2023 were 415,800 tonnes, compared to 266,000 tonnes for the previous five years. This season, 14 vessels, including four ships each from China and Norway, three from South Korea and one each from Chile, Russia and Ukraine, registered for the fishery compared to nine in 2023.
Time and again, research has shown that fully protected MPAs, where fishing and other commercial activities are prohibited, are one of the best steps governments can take to help marine life build genetic diversity and biomass, making them more resilient to fishing and climate change. There is also a spillover effect that benefits adjacent ecosystems as well as commercial fishing.
That is not to say that a host of issues confronting the Kunming-Montreal framework, COP29, and the G20 are less important, but those agreements are on track for medium-to-long term action, while final approval for Antarctica's MPA network is tantalizingly close.
Decades of research has already identified areas that will deliver the most conservation benefit per square-kilometer and, as part of the Antarctic Treaty System, CCAMLR decisions needn't go through a laborious ratification process. The body's 26 member countries and the European Union only have to give the proposals a thumbs up.
At last count, only 8.35 percent of the global ocean is currently protected. If CCAMLR approved all four proposals ready for immediate implementation--East Antarctic; Weddell Sea, Phase 1; Antarctic Peninsula, Domain 1; and, Weddell Sea, Phase 2--they would protect 26 percent of the Southern Ocean and nearly 3 percent of the global ocean. It would be the largest single act of ocean conservation in history and represent a major contribution toward achieving the global 30x30 goal.
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It has become apparent that Antarctic marine protections urgently require high level attention from leaders before the crisis slips out of hand. In 2023, the G20 endorsed expanding MPA's in Antarctica. They now have an opportunity to give the process a boost by calling for the approval of the aforementioned MPA proposals no later than 2026 in their "Leaders' Declaration".
The world depends on a healthy Southern Ocean, and the future of the Southern Ocean requires leadership now.
Holly Parker Curry is the MPA Campaign Director for the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC).
IPS UN Bureau
