July 18, 2013– Remember back in the Cold War days when battle lines were clear? Americans wore the white hats, and the Soviet Union sported the black? Rocky IV? U.S.A. 4, U.S.S.R. 3?
Those old roles re-emerged somewhat this week in Bremerhaven, Germany, when the Russian Federation—supported by one of its former soviet territories, Ukraine—stood up not just to the United States but also to the European Union and the other 23 members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, or CCAMLR. At a special intercessional meeting, the commission was poised to implement arguably the single-greatest accomplishment in high-seas international ocean conservation—the establishment of massive marine reserves in the waters of the Southern Ocean off the coast of Antarctica—when Russia used its veto power to block implementation.
Marine reserves, also known as marine protected areas, are portions of the ocean set aside for some level of special protection. They can include no-fishing zones and typically have other strict regulations on industrial activity. The proposed Southern Ocean reserves would cover more than 3.8 million square kilometers of the Ross Sea and other areas around Antarctica—more space than all of the world’s existing marine reserves combined.
On Monday night, as members of the U.S. Senate cloistered themselves in the Old Senate Chamber in the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) from invoking the so-called nuclear option to break the logjam of Republican filibusters, the heads of delegation to CCAMLR concluded their own special meeting. And if you think the U.S. Congress’s deliberative process is dysfunctional, consider this: The Senate emerged from its meeting with the framework of a deal. CCAMLR did not.
Because CCAMLR, similar to many international organizations, requires unanimity among its members to pass resolutions, Russian opposition means the proposal will not move forward, despite support from every other participating country except Ukraine. It’s widely expected that Ukraine will follow Russia’s lead if its larger neighbor decides to permit the designation.
Part of the reason Russia’s opposition came as such a surprise to other members of the commission is that the Russians were the ones who requested the special meeting at the conclusion of the annual meeting last October in Hobart, Australia. As this was just the second special meeting ever called in the more than 30-year history of the commission, observers and other member states believed a deal was in the offing.
Read the full story at the Center For American Progress