Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years
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:<p>> 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.<p>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].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/europe/russia-arctic-ocean-fishing-thaw.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/europe/russia-arcti...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Labour_Convention" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Labour_Convention</a><p>[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_th...</a>