When José Antonio Kast took office as Chile’s new president in March, one of his first moves was to put the brakes on plans to expand two protected marine parks – raising doubts about the country’s high-profile bid to host the headquarters of the High Seas Treaty.
But during the UN General Assembly last month, the right-wing leader reaffirmed his leftist predecessor’s ambition for Chile to host the landmark global pact, which came into effect in January and provides a legal framework to protect the waters of the high seas beyond national jurisdiction that cover about two-thirds of the world’s oceans.
Hailing the country’s “maritime vocation”, Kast’s government said the bid to host the treaty’s secretariat in the port city of Valparaíso was state policy and testament to its commitment to multilateralism.
“For the government of Chile, it is of high interest to achieve this recognition, and we will carry out all the efforts to obtain the necessary support,” Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna was quoted as saying by local media.
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Tough competition from Chinese, Belgian bids
But to garner the votes it needs, Chile must fend off competing bids by Belgium – which has proposed its well-connected capital, Brussels – and China, whose well-funded bid includes the provision of free premises in the coastal city of Xiamen and five years of free utility costs.
Parties to the treaty, formally called the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), will choose the headquarters at their first summit (COP1), in New York from January 11 to January 22, 2027. They will seek consensus, falling back on a two-thirds majority in successive secret ballots.
Chile has offered to provide a restored waterside warehouse “at its own expense” as office space, pitching itself to developing countries as a Global South alternative to Europe-centred Brussels. Among richer countries, it is promoting its democratic credentials and greater transparency as an alternative to China.
Rolling back environmental safeguards at home?
While the South American country remains the top pick among environmental campaigners and other civil society groups, critics of Kast’s government say recent policy moves may make it harder for the country to garner the support it needs.
On March 12, the day after Kast took office, the Environment Ministry withdrew 43 decrees awaiting legal approval, including a push to expand the Mar de Juan Fernández and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks – vast protected areas in Chile’s Pacific Ocean waters. Both remain under review, the ministry told Climate Home News.
The decrees also included an emission standard for coal power plants and regulations for Chile’s new biodiversity and protected areas service.
A month after holding up the decrees, Kast questioned aspects of Chile’s urban wetlands protection law, suggesting it was sometimes an unjustified obstacle to much-needed housing development, and his administration has also sought to ease the rules on salmon farming in the world’s second-largest producer.
In August, the Constitutional Court struck down the salmon farming reform after a challenge by opposition lawmakers and warnings from green groups including Greenpeace, which said it could help farms relocate into protected areas such as the Kawésqar National Reserve.
Valparaíso mayor Camila Nieto, from former leftist President Gabriel Boric’s party, backs the bid to host the High Seas Treaty, but said she hoped “the government’s support also translates into public policies consistent with the goals of protecting and conserving the oceans”.
“The decisions a country makes on environmental matters can influence international perceptions of its commitment to protecting the oceans. That is something we cannot ignore,” Nieto told Climate Home News.
China’s bid stirs concerns over data access, fishing
Chile’s past record on marine protection – it has protected 43% of its jurisdictional waters – could yet give it an edge.
“Chile deserves it for its conservation record as a state. For more than 15 years Chile has been following this path,” Liesbeth van der Meer, executive director at conservation group Oceana in Chile, told Climate Home News.
Concerns in some quarters about the rival bid by China – for example, over a potential conflict of interest due to the vast Chinese fishing industry – may also weigh in Chile’s favour, experts say.
Chinese-flagged vessels did about 30% of detected high seas fishing between 2022 and 2024, according to an Oceana analysis of Global Fishing Watch data. China also sponsors five of the International Seabed Authority’s 31 deep-sea mining exploration contracts, more than any other country.
The secretariat would host sensitive marine data, making transparency paramount, experts say.
China says hosting the secretariat in Xiamen would help make the treaty more globally representative, fostering cooperation between rich and developing countries and aiding equitable access to marine science and technology.
Wang Yi, China’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement that the country has “all along championed true multilateralism” and “firmly defended” UN institutions. Given Xiamen’s $38-billion ocean industry, the city lives up to the treaty’s “significance and promising future”, he added.
Meanwhile, Chile is proposing the treaty’s first high seas marine protected area for the Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges, a chain of more than 110 seamounts stretching about 4,000 km from off Peru to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that is rich in endemic fish and other marine species.
The ridges are “a true oasis of productivity”, said Carlos Gaymer, director of the Centre for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands at Universidad Católica del Norte and co-author of a 2021 scientific review of the area.
The water is so clear that phytoplankton thrive around 200 metres down, feeding zooplankton, small fish and, up the chain, sharks and seabirds. Whales, turtles and sharks use the ridges as “a real highway” across the Pacific, Gaymer said. Parts of the Nazca ridge are likely nursery grounds for jack mackerel and swordfish.
Chile has already asked the body that regulates the industry in the area – the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) – to close the ridges to all fishing vessels. According to Chilean data, more than 80% of fishing in the area involves Chinese vessels.
Meeting on the Chilean request in early September, SPRFMO’s scientific committee agreed only to recommend closing the area to bottom fishing. SPRFMO’s commission will take the final decision at its next meeting, in early 2027.
For Gaymer, Chile’s push to close the area to fishing should be seen as a “starting point” for the treaty proposal.
“Every time there’s a new expedition, species new to science appear,” Gaymer said. “If you don’t protect areas like these … those species simply disappear from the planet.”
The post Race to host High Seas Treaty HQ heats up as Chile reaffirms bid appeared first on Climate Home News.
Race to host High Seas Treaty HQ heats up as Chile reaffirms bid
Energy bills in the UK have continued to soar in 2026, with intense debate raging about how to bring them down.
In October 2026, the cap on household energy bills reached its highest level in three years, rising by £60 amid high gas prices driven by the Iran war.
The cap is forecast to jump by as much as another quarter in January 2027, pushing annual energy bills towards £2,200.
Energy bills have not been that high since 2022 when, in the fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UK government spent more than £60bn on supporting consumers through the crisis.
While expensive gas is behind the lion’s share of the rise in bills since 2020, policy costs and investment in the gas and electricity grids are also putting some pressure on prices.
This has sparked conflicting calls to continue the clean-energy transition to get off the “fossil-fuel rollercoaster”, to move more slowly – or to abandon climate goals in favour of more gas.
Below, Carbon Brief looks at the real drivers of high energy bills in the UK, what has been done to address them to date and what options are available to cut them going forward.
These include taking more policy costs off electricity bills, boosting flexibility or shifting to more efficient technologies with lower running costs, such as heat pumps and electric vehicles (EVs).
What is driving high energy bills?
In October 2026, UK household energy bills reached their highest levels since 2022, with the price cap for typical homes hitting £1,723 per year, up 47% in real terms since October 2020.
Industrial energy users also face high costs, particularly for their electricity.
For households, another sharp increase is now all but guaranteed under the price cap for January 2027, which is forecast to rise by around 25% from current levels.
Wholesale costs for electricity and gas make up 44% of the current cap of £1,723 per year, according to Carbon Brief analysis of figures from thinktank Nesta, shown in the figure below.
The wholesale cost of both electricity and gas is tied to gas prices, due to the marginal pricing system used in power markets in the UK and most other countries.
Network charges make up a further 24% of bills and operating costs are another 17%, whereas policy costs only account for 7% of the total.
There has been increasing interest in the so-called “non-commodity costs” – those not related to wholesale energy – that now make up a significant portion of bills, as shown in the figure above.
Yet while these costs have been increasing – particularly those related to investing in energy networks – they are not the reason why energy bills have soared once again in recent months.
Indeed, Nesta analysis recently published by Carbon Brief shows that, contrary to widespread UK media and political narratives, a surge in wholesale costs driven by expensive gas is responsible for more than 80% of the rise in dual-fuel household energy bills since 2020, as shown below.
The second-largest driver of the rise in costs since 2020 is due to the cost of operating, maintaining and expanding gas and electricity networks, as shown in the figure above.
At the end of 2025, energy regulator Ofgem approved £29bn of upfront investment into the national gas and electricity grids, as well as the gas distribution network that connects to homes and businesses. This is part of a wider package of up to around £90bn of investment out to 2031.
As a result of these investment plans, network charges are expected to increase by around 50% between 2025 and 2030, from £222 a year to £330 for a typical dual-fuel household.
(This figure covers gas and electricity transmission and gas distribution, but not electricity distribution. A further package of increased investment in the electricity distribution network, for the period from 2028-2033, is due to be approved by Ofgem by the end of 2027.)