In bid to boost global biodiversity conservation, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre is convening an Expert Meeting on the Protection of World Heritage in the High Seas, to which EULawSD Academic Coordinator Riccardo Pavoni has been invited.
Right in the aftermath of EULawSD Keynote Lecture by Prof Giuseppe Cataldi (University of Napoli L’Orientale) on law-of-the-sea-issues, we are happy to announce that EULawSD academic coordinator, Prof Riccardo Pavoni, has been invited by UNESCO World Heritage Centre to take part in a forthcoming expert meeting on ‘Protecting sites of potential Outstanding Universal Value in the High Seas: the practical modalities’.
The Meeting (Monte Carlo, 11-12 December) will examine the legal and policy options available to extend the World Heritage Convention (WHC) List to those marine sites located in areas beyond national jurisdiction that are of exceptional value in terms of biodiversity conservation and environmental sustainability, such as the Costa Rica Thermal Dome or the Sargasso Sea. It follows the publication, by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), of the 2016 report on World Heritage in the High Seas: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.
The meeting takes place at a time where international processes and initiatives on marine biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, which are crucial to the realization of SDG 14, are intensifying. It may in particular take advantage of the momentum created by the parallel negotiations of a treaty instrument under the UN Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (this Intergovernmental Conference held its first session last September).
Synergy between the UNCLOS process and the UNESCO WHC process may translate into a significant factor paving the way for successful outcomes for the protection of our oceans, their sites of outstanding universal value, and the precious biodiversity they contain.