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The UK has officially taken its first big step toward joining one of the most ambitious international ocean protection efforts in decades, the High Seas Treaty, also known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement.

The government introduced a bill to parliament that lays out the domestic legal framework needed for the UK to ratify the treaty. It’s a promising move, but before you picture a big splashy ratification ceremony, it’s worth remembering: this is just the beginning of what could be a long voyage through parliament and international bureaucracy.

So, what’s in this bill, why does it matter and why are scientists and biotech companies watching it so closely? Let’s unpack it.

What the High Seas Treaty actually does

First, a quick refresher.

The High Seas Treaty sits under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and focuses on conserving marine biodiversity in parts of the ocean that don’t fall under any single nation’s control, literally, the high seas.

These areas make up almost half the planet’s surface and are home to incredible but fragile ecosystems. Until now, there’s been no comprehensive global framework to protect them from overexploitation, pollution and the emerging risks of deep-sea mining and bioprospecting (that’s the use of marine organisms in genetic and pharmaceutical research).

The treaty changes that. It introduces new rules for:

• marine protected areas on the high seas;

• environmental impact assessments for high-sea activities; and

• access and benefit sharing of marine genetic resources (and related digital sequence data).

It’s a big deal, both for conservation and for industries that depend on the ocean’s genetic treasures for innovation.

The UK’s first step: a domestic legal framework

The newly introduced bill is the UK’s way of turning these global commitments into something that actually works under UK law.

Essentially, the bill provides the legal scaffolding that will allow the government to ratify the treaty later, but ratification itself can’t happen until this framework is passed and further secondary legislation is made.

That means the High Seas Treaty won’t be binding on the UK just yet. First, MPs and peers will need to scrutinise the bill, debate the details and probably haggle over some of its more technical (and controversial) provisions.

What’s in the bill?

The main focus is on marine genetic resources, the genetic material found in marine organisms beyond national waters. The bill sets out the information that researchers and companies will need to provide when collecting or using such resources, as well as how they’ll need to share the resulting benefits.

Right now, those benefit-sharing rules are non-monetary. That means researchers won’t have to pay royalties but will instead need to share knowledge and data, for example, by depositing genetic samples in approved repositories and uploading genetic sequence information into open-access databases.

According to the government, this isn’t exactly revolutionary. It points out that most scientific journals and UK research funders already require data to be shared publicly before publication. So, on that front, the UK seems confident this won’t rock the boat.

The real storm: monetary benefit sharing

But the big question mark is money.

The treaty does include provisions for potential monetary benefit sharing, payments linked to the commercial use of marine genetic resources, but the specifics haven’t been worked out internationally yet. Those details will be decided later by the treaty’s Conference of the Parties (basically, a global committee of signatories).

For now, the UK bill leaves that part open ended. It gives the secretary of state the power to create regulations later, through secondary legislation, once the global framework for payments exists.

Balancing conservation with innovation

The UK government has been vocal about its ambitions to grow its engineering biology and biotech sectors, both of which rely heavily on access to genetic resources and digital sequence information.

So, while it’s eager to show international leadership on ocean conservation, it also has to be careful not to create too much red tape for researchers and innovators.

That’s likely why the current bill sticks to the 'safe' parts, the non-monetary sharing and reporting obligations, and defers the more complex financial elements until the global picture becomes clearer.

In short, it’s taking a measured approach: enough progress to keep international commitments on track, but not so much that it risks stalling scientific and industrial innovation at home.

Any such regulations would have to go through the draft affirmative procedure, meaning they’d need active approval from both Houses of Parliament after debate. So they’d get a higher-than-usual level of scrutiny.

That’s good for transparency, but it also means any progress could be slow. And considering it took almost two decades just to negotiate the treaty text, don’t expect the monetary benefit-sharing mechanism to arrive any time soon.

A new era for ocean governance

The High Seas Treaty represents a turning point in how the world thinks about the oceans, not just as a resource, but as a shared responsibility.

For the UK, this bill signals serious intent to join that global effort. But the path to ratification will be long, technical and politically delicate.

Still, the tide is turning. And if this process stays on course, the UK could soon help anchor one of the most significant environmental agreements in modern history, one that finally gives the high seas the protection they deserve.