China’s Role in Saving the Wild Southern Ocean: Creating a Network of Marine Protected Areas
Concentrated fishing and climate change are threatening the marine environment surrounding Antarctica, one of the least altered regions of the planet. In an effort to protect these marine ecosystems, in 2011, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR, a consensus-based body with 26 members with conservation management authority for the Southern Ocean) agreed to create a network of large-scale marine protected areas (MPAs) for Antarctica. In 2016, CCAMLR designated a 2.02 million km2 area of Antarctica's Ross Sea with special protection from human activities. China and Russia were the final countries to provide consensus support for the Ross Sea MPA.
At its upcoming November meeting, CCAMLR will consider proposals for three MPAs in East Antarctica, the Weddell Sea and the Antarctic Peninsula. If designated together, nearly 4 million km2 of the Southern Ocean would be protected, resulting in the largest environmental protection event in history. In a November 2019 meeting with French Prime Minister Macron, Xi Jinping expressed a commitment to cooperate on the establishment of a new Southern Ocean MPA, but it is not clear when China will agree to the three proposed protected areas.
At this joint Wilson Center/Pew Charitable Trusts webinar, speakers will discuss the imperative of protecting these unique ocean environments and a path forward for the three Marine Protected Area proposals. Jiliang Chen (Greenovation Hub) and Nicole Bransome (Pew Charitable Trusts) will introduce the barriers and opportunities for protecting the Southern Ocean and current status of the CCAMLR marine protected area agreements. Binbin Li (Duke Kunshan University) will introduce China’s expanding development of land and marine protected areas domestically and how they may shape the country’s approach to international MPAs. Nengye Liu (Macquarie University) and Julia Guifang Xue (Shanghai Jiaotong University) will discuss China’s evolving position on marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean and what this means for future Antarctic governance.