{"id":19163,"date":"2018-11-02T18:16:27","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T18:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/?p=19163"},"modified":"2021-12-01T13:51:12","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T12:51:12","slug":"governments-have-failed-to-protect-the-antarctic-but-this-isnt-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/19163\/governments-have-failed-to-protect-the-antarctic-but-this-isnt-over\/","title":{"rendered":"Governments have failed to protect the Antarctic \u2014 but this isn\u2019t over"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Penguins

Penguins take shelter on an iceberg near Trinity Island in the Antarctic.<\/p><\/div>\n

Over the last two weeks, a group of governments met in Hobart, Australia, to negotiate a new Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary. <\/span><\/p>\n

They failed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although 22 governments supported the sanctuary, negotiators from Russia, China and Norway stopped it from going ahead. The Russian and Chinese delegations even used delaying tactics to waste time and hold up the negotiations, rather than engaging with the scientific evidence for the sanctuary. <\/span><\/p>\n

This failure leaves the incredible wildlife of the Antarctic exposed to pressures from overfishing, pollution and climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Humpback

Humpback whales feeding for krill in the Antarctic.<\/p><\/div>\n

A broken system<\/span><\/h2>\n

There\u2019s a specific international body that makes decisions about the waters around Antarctica: the Antarctic Ocean Commission. The Commission, officially known as CCAMLR, is made up of\u00a0<\/span>24 countries plus the European Union<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s their job to look after Antarctic marine life and make sure the continent\u2019s seas (which no single country controls) don\u2019t become a free-for-all of overfishing. But because every country has to agree before a new sanctuary can go ahead, it\u2019s easy for a small minority to stop things from progressing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Antarctic Ocean Commission failed this time, and if they keep failing, it\u2019ll be increasingly clear that they\u2019re unfit for purpose and aren\u2019t part of the solution.<\/span><\/p>\n

New hope for the oceans<\/span><\/h2>\n

Today is a sad day for everyone who cares about our blue planet. But this isn\u2019t the end. In fact, it\u2019s just the beginning \u2014 2.7 million people joined the campaign for this ocean sanctuary and we\u2019re going to come back stronger than ever.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Rise

“Penguin” activists in Stockholm campaigned for an Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary on Penguin Awareness Day 2018.<\/p><\/div>\n

First, we\u2019ll keep working to protect the Antarctic Ocean. But that alone isn\u2019t enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

To truly start healing our blue planet, we need to think bigger. That means changing how the system works so it\u2019s easier to protect large areas of our global oceans. <\/span><\/p>\n

Soon, we\u2019ll have a chance to do exactly that. There\u2019s a new global ocean treaty on the table at the UN. If it\u2019s approved, it\u2019ll open the door to creating huge new protected areas covering at least one-third of the world\u2019s oceans. \u00a0Let\u2019s not forget that 22 of the 25 countries at the Antarctic negotiations supported the creation of our sanctuary. In almost any other political forum, that would have been enough to make it a reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

This could be a game-changer for ocean protection, and together, we can make it happen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Malachi<\/em>\u00a0Chadwick is a digital campaigner for Greenpeace UK.<\/em><\/p>\n

Block content is empty. Check the block’s settings or remove it.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government leaders have failed, but the 2.7 million people calling for an Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary will come back stronger than ever to protect our blue planet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":17700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[85],"p4-page-type":[59],"class_list":["post-19163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nature","tag-oceans","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19163"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51276,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19163\/revisions\/51276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19163"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=19163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}