December 5th, 2016 — More than a year ago, five Arctic nations signed a declaration pledging to keep their fishing fleets out of the international waters in the Arctic Ocean, an area increasingly ripe for exploitation as summer sea ice diminishes — and perhaps increasingly vulnerable with so little known about its ecology.
Now a group of diplomats is still trying to hammer out a binding agreement to protect waters of the central Arctic Ocean. The effort has expanded to nine nations and the European Union.
A meeting last week in the Faroe Islands, about halfway between Iceland and Norway, failed to produce the deal that some had expected to be in place by now, well before any commercial fishing vessels head north into international Arctic waters. Another session will be held early next year, probably in Iceland.
All parties are sticking by the goal of protecting the Arctic Ocean, said the U.S. State Department official who is managing the negotiations.
“All delegations reaffirmed their commitment to prevent unregulated commercial high-seas fishing in the central Arctic Ocean as well as a commitment to promote the conservation and sustainable use of living marine resources and to safeguard healthy marine ecosystems in the central Arctic Ocean,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Balton said in a “chairman’s statement” that was released at the end of the session.
There was “good progress in resolving differences of view on a number of the main issues under discussion,” Balton’s diplomatic statement said, and there is reason to believe that a binding agreement will be produced soon. “There was a general belief that these discussions have the possibility of concluding successfully in the near future,” his statement said.