4 ms·

The author wrote twelve paragraphs, yet didn't care to mention explicitly which nine nations reached a deal. The answer according to NY Times[1] is the followin

by aleyan 9y ago

The author wrote twelve paragraphs, yet didn't care to mention explicitly which nine nations reached a deal. The answer according to NY Times[1] is the following: > To take effect, the agreement on a high-latitude fishing ban must be signed by all the countries involved: the United States, Norway, Denmark, Canada and Russia, which all have Arctic shorelines; and South Korea, China, Japan, the European Union and Iceland, which operate ocean trawling fleets. Thank you NY Times for actually listing the countries involved so succinctly. Unfortunately I have to fault your reporting too. Treaties don't take effect domestically until they are ratified by the involved countries legislatures, not are merely signed. Additionally some treaties have clauses so that they don't take effect until the treaty is ratified by some subset of signatories or by all signatories. It isn't clear which is the case here, but the treaty certainly won't take effect from merely being signed by the nine countries and the EU. It may take years to get the various countries legislatures to ratify. US for example has signed but hasn't ratified the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 [2] or a more recent Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 [3]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/europe/russia-arctic-ocean-fishing-thaw.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/europe/russia-arcti... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Labour_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Labour_Convention [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_th...

bloodberet 9y ago
Great comment to the post. Thanks!
lostlogin 9y ago
Given the way Japan treats the Southern Ocean and the whale sanctuary my hopes are low but I’d be very happy to be wrong.
haZard_OS 9y ago
Paragraphs 7 and 8 contain the information you claim isn't in the article.
gldalmaso 9y ago
Trump really ruined it. All I can think about now is, is this another agreement that the US is gonna sign and then bail? When are agreements for real for the US? These kinds of multinational agreements are made to tackle the big problems with long run goals. If every other executive office is gonna hand pick which agreements to meet, they are meaningless.
- jerf 9y ago
  Signing agreements with no intent to enforce them is a universal problem, not a particularly US problem, nor is failing to fully ratify them even after a "signature". The political calculus is simple; you win plaudits from people who pay attention to words over results (which is a LOT of people in politics, including a lot of people in charge of money flow), and signatures are cheap, results are expensive. There's a lot of signing things that don't ever happen. In general when I hear about an international agreement, I tend to assume it's a no-op until proved further. You can't even get international cooperation with something as economically beneficial to its participants as OPEC, let alone things bigger than that and with fewer positive monetary implications.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  It was actually George's administration that changed ratification from merely being a pro forma process to a meaningful step of legislative oversight. George Washington, that is. This was done because neither the president nor Senate were happy with having the Senate be involved in the entire treaty-making process, and so they switched to the ratification step to fulfill the requirements in the Constitution to adhere to the "advice and consent of the Senate" rules. Other nations, as they gained parliamentary democracies, saw what the US did here and adopted it in their legislative practices.
sytelus 9y ago
Current tax bill in US is opening up arctic to explore for oil. So don't have too much hope for this...
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  "tax" bill
semi-extrinsic 9y ago
It can get even weirder. Take the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling which introduced a moratorium on whaling. Norway has signed and ratified the convention, but (per Wikipedia) "Norway maintains an objection to paragraph 10(e) of the convention (the section referring to the 1986 moratorium). Therefore, that provision is not binding upon Norway and the 1986 IWC global moratorium does not apply to it."
wdr1 9y ago
> Unfortunately I have to fault your reporting too. Treaties don't take effect domestically until they are ratified by the involved countries legislatures, not are merely signed. Not always. Obama didn't take the Paris climate agreement to Congress. I.e., it was never ratified, yet the general sentiment was the US had joined, complied during the Obama administration, and likely would have would under a Clinton administration. And there were a lot of headlines about the US "leaving" the agreement under Trump, which requires the US having been in. Of course, the obvious downside to not being ratified is exactly what happened under Trump. That the President can make a unilateral decision to leave the agreement. That said, if Trump agreed to do this, I imagine there's a good chance it follows through under his administration. (Although with Trump you never know.) And I imagine any subsequent Democratic administration follows through as well.

by aleyan 9y ago

bloodberet 9y ago

Great comment to the post. Thanks!

lostlogin 9y ago

Given the way Japan treats the Southern Ocean and the whale sanctuary my hopes are low but I’d be very happy to be wrong.

haZard_OS 9y ago

Paragraphs 7 and 8 contain the information you claim isn't in the article.

gldalmaso 9y ago

Trump really ruined it. All I can think about now is, is this another agreement that the US is gonna sign and then bail? When are agreements for real for the US? These kinds of multinational agreements are made to tackle the big problems with long run goals. If every other executive office is gonna hand pick which agreements to meet, they are meaningless.

jerf 9y ago
Signing agreements with no intent to enforce them is a universal problem, not a particularly US problem, nor is failing to fully ratify them even after a "signature". The political calculus is simple; you win plaudits from people who pay attention to words over results (which is a LOT of people in politics, including a lot of people in charge of money flow), and signatures are cheap, results are expensive. There's a lot of signing things that don't ever happen. In general when I hear about an international agreement, I tend to assume it's a no-op until proved further. You can't even get international cooperation with something as economically beneficial to its participants as OPEC, let alone things bigger than that and with fewer positive monetary implications.
jcranmer 9y ago
It was actually George's administration that changed ratification from merely being a pro forma process to a meaningful step of legislative oversight. George Washington, that is. This was done because neither the president nor Senate were happy with having the Senate be involved in the entire treaty-making process, and so they switched to the ratification step to fulfill the requirements in the Constitution to adhere to the "advice and consent of the Senate" rules. Other nations, as they gained parliamentary democracies, saw what the US did here and adopted it in their legislative practices.

sytelus 9y ago

Current tax bill in US is opening up arctic to explore for oil. So don't have too much hope for this...

JohnTHaller 9y ago
"tax" bill

semi-extrinsic 9y ago

It can get even weirder. Take the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling which introduced a moratorium on whaling. Norway has signed and ratified the convention, but (per Wikipedia) "Norway maintains an objection to paragraph 10(e) of the convention (the section referring to the 1986 moratorium). Therefore, that provision is not binding upon Norway and the 1986 IWC global moratorium does not apply to it."

wdr1 9y ago

> Unfortunately I have to fault your reporting too. Treaties don't take effect domestically until they are ratified by the involved countries legislatures, not are merely signed. Not always. Obama didn't take the Paris climate agreement to Congress. I.e., it was never ratified, yet the general sentiment was the US had joined, complied during the Obama administration, and likely would have would under a Clinton administration. And there were a lot of headlines about the US "leaving" the agreement under Trump, which requires the US having been in. Of course, the obvious downside to not being ratified is exactly what happened under Trump. That the President can make a unilateral decision to leave the agreement. That said, if Trump agreed to do this, I imagine there's a good chance it follows through under his administration. (Although with Trump you never know.) And I imagine any subsequent Democratic administration follows through as well.