Interdisciplinary considerations for closing the High Seas to fishing
Crespo, G.O. (2025). Interdisciplinary considerations for closing the High Seas to fishing, in: Guggisberg, S. et al. Non-use measures for global goods and commons in international law. Publications on Ocean Development, 105: pp. 39-63. https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004730571_004
In: Guggisberg, S.; Blanchard, C. (Ed.) (2025). Non-use measures for global goods and commons in international law. Publications on Ocean Development, 105. Brill|Nijhoff: Leiden; Boston . ISBN 9789004730564; e-ISBN 9789004730564. xxx, 536 pp. https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004730571, more
In: Publications on Ocean Development. Brill: Leiden. ISSN 0924-1922, more
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| Abstract |
After the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, the ocean beyond the jurisdiction of coastal and island States, the high seas, represents humanity’s largest commons, extending across 46% of the planet’s surface. According to various United Nations (UN) agencies, biodiversity in the high seas, and the ocean more generally, is in crisis.1 Marine biodiversity loss is widely recognised as a threat to planetary health and has long been on the agenda of the international community. Of the 169 Targets agreed upon during the 2015 UN Summit for the Adoption of the 2030 Agenda, Target 4 under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 was established to explicitly end overfishing and restore fish stocks2 to sustainable levels.3 In 2015, when the agenda was adopted, 33.1% of global fish stocks were classified as overfished, tripling the rate reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1974.4 However, instead of improving, the situation has since deteriorated. The 2024 State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture report by the FAO, which published the 2021 fishing rates, reported a global overfishing rate of 37.7%, an increase of 4.6% since 2015, undermining SDG 14.4, which had a time-bound target date set to 2020.5 In their 2018 report, the FAO already stated that “it seems unlikely that the world’s fisheries can rebuild the 33.1 percent of stocks that are currently overfished in the very near future”; however, the FAO did not foresee that overfishing would worsen. In addition to this crisis for targeted fish species, the rest of marine biodiversity does not seem to fare any better. For example, according to the latest International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, six of the seven species of sea turtle in the world are threatened with extinction, while the seventh is data deficient,6 and a 71% decline in the abundance of oceanic sharks has been noted in just five decades due to commercial fishing.7 One is warranted to ask if the situation might even be worse for the many other species which are not monitored. |
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