Spanish
Mexico City, June 26 (EFE).- The Mexican delegation of the international organization Greenpeace celebrated this Thursday the ratification in the Mexican Senate of the Global Oceans Treaty, whose objective is to protect marine life on the high seas.
The treaty will allow the creation of protected areas with which it is expected to cover 30% of the oceans by 2030, thus fulfilling the 30x30 objective of the Convention on Biological Diversity of COP15 of 2022.
"This ratification marks a historic milestone in the protection of marine ecosystems, because achieving it took more than 20 years of negotiations and we are finally closer to it beginning to be implemented and all these ecosystems being effectively protected," praised Ornela Garelli, a member of Greenpeace.
Now, the decision of the legislative body must be sent to the president of the country, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will publish it in the Official Journal of the Federation, and subsequently it will be validated before the United Nations Organization (UN), thus joining the list of the 60 countries necessary for the measure to come into force.
Although the protection of these areas is in international waters, this also implies "a benefit for the ecosystems that are within our national territory, because the oceans are an interconnected system," explained Garelli.
This ratification adds to the reform of the General Wildlife Law that prohibits the use of marine mammals in shows and to the National Environmental Restoration Program 2025–2030 (PNRA), which seeks to restore 30% of the country's degraded ecosystems in the next five years. Some measures that Greenpeace Mexico has valued in a "very positive way" and that "go in the right direction" to restore key ecosystems in the country. Even so, they are asking to increase the protection of marine areas in Mexico, because currently about 22% is protected and "the recommendation of the international scientific community is 30% as a minimum", sentenced Garelli. Currently, according to the organization, less than 1% of the high seas are properly protected, and to reach 30x30, about 11 million square kilometers of ocean must be protected each year.
