Our long-term health, development, and prosperity depend on repairing our relationship with nature. This is especially the case in responding to our ocean emergency. Marine pollution, overfishing, and acidifying and warming seas are taking their toll on the health of our ocean. And our human prosperity depends on a healthy ocean.
At the beginning of this year, Palau reached a new milestone by implementing the Palau National Marine Sanctuary. We are protecting 80% of our Exclusive Economic Zone as a no-take protected area, echoing our ancient tradition of a "bul", a moratorium on fishing in order to sustain fisheries for the long-term. And we will be developing an artisanal domestic fishing sector in the other 20% of our EEZ, to diversify our economy, sustain jobs, and improve access to healthy seafood.
Palau is a large ocean state, and we are acting in accordance with our responsibilities for stewardship over our EEZ. But the ocean covers the majority of our planet's surface. We hope that Palau's actions will inspire ambition elsewhere. We are all ocean people, even if we do not live near coasts. All of humanity depends on the ocean for food, for climate regulation, for trade, for security, and for so much more.
The High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, which I co-chair, has been building a blueprint for this ocean ambition. While the Panel's work has been underway long prior to the pandemic, its analysis highlights how investments in key ocean economy sectors provide a way to "build back bluer" from the pandemic, with benefits for jobs, the environment, and human health. These include protecting coastal and marine ecosystems such as mangroves; investing in sewage and wastewater infrastructure for coastal communities, and in zero-emission marine transport.
At the end of this year, the Ocean Panel will launch our recommendations on transformative actions that we need to take to transition to a sustainable ocean economy. We cannot let this opportunity to rebalance production and ocean protection escape us.
To complement these actions, it is also vital that negotiations on a high seas treaty are completed next year. We need to close this governance gap on the high seas, so that we are able to effectively protect the ocean beyond national jurisdiction.
Additionally, at next year's Convention on Biological Diversity COP15, the ocean must also not be neglected. The Global Biodiversity Outlook released last week starkly warns that we have not been successful in reaching the targets set forward a decade ago in Aichi. Significant implementation gaps remain. As we set a new framework for the conservation of nature over the next decade, we need to act with greater urgency, and with greater solidarity for implementation of these targets in developing countries.
At least 30% of the ocean needs to be protected by 2030. The role of coral reefs also needs to be appropriately recognized. But for this framework to be effective, it must learn the lessons of the past decade: that goals must be supported by adequate resources.
