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:

> 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-arcti...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Labour_Convention

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_th...

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.

How is it enforced, and what are the penalties?

It's enforced by fishing in the high artic being pretty conspicuous.

Regarding penalties: With ratification, such treaties become law. There are no penalties specified, but courts are empowered to enforce them by whatever means they deem effective. Environmental groups, for example, could sue the US, in US courts.

Beyond that, international cooperation doesn't rely on penalties or similar sanction mechanisms as much as, for example, criminal law. There simply is no "world government" that would have the power to "enforce by force". But, contrary to armchair politicians everywhere, that doesn't render international law meaningless. It's a system of thousands of treaties and other agreements that, collectively, are net-positive for every country involved. The alternative to respecting them is to be seen as an untrustworthy partner, making it harder, or impossible, to reach future agreements or keep others to their word.

A great, current example is the possibility of the US pulling out of the Iran Deal: Not only would it legitimately allow Iran to then restart their nuclear program. It is also a major factor in the tensions between the US and North Korea. Because NK, quite obviously, is asking themselves: Why should we engage in negotiating a deal, if the US does not feel bound by it?

(The same works in reverse, because NK has also been less-than-stellar in following previous agreements)

>>> Have we outgrown commercial fishing?

We could certainly finish any species of fish quickly if we could catch all of them quickly.

There are fish farms, should be more durable than waiting for fish to reproduce and catch them in the wild.