Group Adjourns Without Acting on Antarctic Reserve - NYTimes.com

PARIS ? Frustrating advocates, an international commission charged with overseeing the Southern Ocean took no action Thursday on a proposal championed by the United States and New Zealand to create the world?s largest marine reserve in the seas around Antarctica.

The two nations had proposed the creation of a 872,000-square-mile reserve in the Ross Sea and East Antarctic; conservationists wanted more, some 1.9 million square miles of protected area. Crucially, despite months of talks between Washington and New Zealand?s government in Wellington, the two countries went into the meeting in Hobart, Australia, with slightly different plans and had to work out a joint proposal early this week.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, whose members include the European Union and 24 member states, operates on a consensus principle, and the issue never came to a vote.
Gerald Leape, a marine policy official with the Pew Environment Group, said China and Russia had been the main opponents of the proposal, while Japan, South Korea and Ukraine had been lukewarm.

The Southern Ocean is one of the most important ecosystems on Earth, home to penguins, seals and whales, as well as vast populations of krill, one of the most important links in the ocean food chain.

A marine protected area can be a place where no commercial activity, including fishing and mineral exploration, is permitted, or an area in which only a few activities are banned. The commission said it would hold an inter-annual meeting ? an unusual step ? in July in Bremerhaven, Germany, to discuss the topic again.

?We?re very disappointed that CCAMLR didn?t take action,? Mr. Leape said. ?The scientific case for an M.P.A. in the Ross Sea and East Antarctica has been made.? Steve Campbell of the Antarctic Ocean Alliance said that 1.2 million people around the world had joined environmental organizations in backing the creation of marine reserves.

The commission has been criticized for holding its meetings behind closed doors out of sight of journalists. But the Southern and Antarctic Ocean Alliance, a coalition that includes environmental and conservation organizations like Greenpeace, W.W.F. and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, has observer status and reports on its activities to the media.

Conservationists said the meeting had not been a complete loss, as the commission adopted a proposal championed by the United States and European Union requiring it to inspect all vessels fishing in the Southern Ocean instead of only those carrying toothfish, commonly known as Chilean sea bass. The Pew Environment Group said in a statement that the action ?closed an important gap.?

Toothfish grow slowly, and little is known about the fishery. That has not stopped large-scale exploitation of the stock, with illegal fishing commonplace for many years.

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/group-adjourns-without-acting-on-antarctic-reserve/

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