ABSTRACT

The governance of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) lacks a legal framework that would ensure the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans. In order to fill this gap, governments have been negotiating a new treaty under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Negotiations have been afflicted by polarisation between two principles: The ‘Freedom of the High Seas’ (FOS) and the ‘Common Heritage of Humankind’ (CHP). Instead of discussing the CHP from a purely legal perspective, we examined, through an ethnographic lens, how it has become a practice of contestation: it is used as a tool and negotiation technique to challenge deeply rooted inequalities in the current world order. The CHP could make a difference if it was integrated into the text as a general principle committing all states to protect and preserve BBNJ for future generations – regardless of their imminent economic value as commercial assets.

摘要

国家管辖范围以外区域（BBNJ）的海洋生物多样性治理缺乏确保海洋保护和可持续利用的法律框架。为了填补这一空白，各国政府一直在根据《联合国海洋法公约》就一项新条约进行谈判。谈判受到两个原则两极分化的影响：“公海自由”（FOS）和“人类共同遗产”（CHP）。我们没有从纯粹的法律角度讨论 CHP，而是从民族志的角度研究了它如何成为一种争论的做法：它被用作挑战当前世界秩序中根深蒂固的不平等的工具和谈判技巧。