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Areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), or "high seas", cover around half of the planet’s surface and are home to a fragile and poorly known biodiversity. Over the past decades, threats against these areas have grown, linked to the exponential use of ABNJ and of their resources (overexploitation of fish stocks, illegal fishing, destructive fishing practices, oil and noise pollution, emerging threats linked to deep-sea mining…). Against this background, the international community felt necessary to engage the discussions on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in ABNJ. This has been done under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and of its Ad-Hoc Open-ended Informal Working Group to study issues relating to the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction (BBNJ Working Group). Within this framework, States must decide by the end of the 69th session of the UNGA (2014) if they agree to launch the negotiations of an Implementing Agreement to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Over the six years since the third edition was prepared, the Draft Covenant has continued to serve as an authoritative reference and checklist for legislators, civil servants and other stakeholders worldwide in their endeavours to ensure that principles and rules of international environmental law and development are thoroughly addressed when they are drafting new. or updating existing, policies and laws. The ever-greater consideration of the environment at the highest political levels is a welcome sign of the role that environmental law and policy has in maintaining international peace and security.