Marine Policy

An Introduction to Governance and International Law of the Oceans

Mark Zacharias, Jeff Ardron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351216203
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Biowissenschaften
• Subtopic: Ökosysteme & Lebensräume

This book provides readers with a foundation in policy development and analysis, describing how policy, including legal mechanisms, are applied to the marine environment. It presents a systematic treatment of all aspects of marine policy, including climate change, energy, environmental protection, fisheries, mining and transportation.

The health of marine environments worldwide is steadily declining, and these trends have been widely reported. Marine Policy summarizes the importance of the ocean governance nexus, discussing current and anticipated challenges facing marine ecosystems, human activities, and efforts to address these threats. This new, fully revised edition has been updated throughout, including content to reflect the recent advances in ocean management and international law. Chapters on shipping, energy/mining and integrated approaches to ocean management have been significantly reworked, plus completely new chapters on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the impacts of climate change have been added. Pedagogical features for students are included throughout.

Aligned with current course offerings, this book is an ideal introduction for undergraduates and graduate students taking marine affairs, science and policy courses.

Chapter 1
An introduction to the world ocean

Human impacts and trends

Key topics

• The ocean is biogeochemically downstream from terrestrial environments, as such, most human activities eventually impact the world ocean.
• Threats to biodiversity can be broadly categorized as a result of overharvesting, pollution, habitat loss, introduced species, ocean acidification and global climate change. Threats can cumulatively interact with negative consequences.
• Until recently, different human impacts on the world ocean were managed in isolation, resulting in seemingly rational management actions that sometimes have unintended consequences.

Introduction

Humanity requires the services of the world ocean in a multitude of ways. For centuries, the oceans were envisaged as immutable and immune to human activities (see Box 1.1 and Box 1.2), and, until the 20th Century, the regulation of human activities affecting the world ocean was widely perceived as unnecessary and unachievable, given the absence of state ownership or hard boundaries in the marine environment. In addition, unlike the human footprint on the terrestrial realm, which is often easy to observe, most marine environments are hidden from us and therefore out of sight and out of mind (see Box 1.3).

The scale of the human footprint on the world ocean is enormous. Many stocks of once globally abundant fishes such as cod, herring and tuna have since become ‘commercially extinct;’ i.e. no longer commercially fishable due to their greatly reduced numbers. Over one million whales were harvested during the 19th and 20th Centuries; to date, only the eastern Pacific grey whale has recovered to near pre-exploitation levels. The global seabird population has declined by 69.7 per cent since 1950; over the past 40 years, the abundance of marine vertebrates (fish, seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals) has declined by an average of 22 per cent (Paleczny et al., 2015; Sumalia et al., 2016). Elevated levels of pollutants are found in most marine species, even those living in the Polar Regions. Ocean temperatures are rising – aggravated by the addition of greenhouse gasses from the combustion of fossil fuels – with many deleterious effects. Tens of thousands of square kilometres of coral reefs have bleached (lost their photosynthetic symbionts), with large associated die-offs in recent years. Important breeding, feeding, mating and resting areas for migratory species have been affected by human activities. The continuing human-induced degradation of marine ecosystems is as wide and deep as the ocean itself (Roberts, 2013).

Box 1.1 Importance of the oceans

Globally, the oceans are the:

• Main reservoir of water: 71 per cent of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans; less than 0.5 per cent is freshwater.
• Main place for organisms to live; they comprise over 99 per cent of the inhabitable volume of the ‘earth’.
• Main planetary reservoir of O₂.
• Possible main planetary producer of O₂ from phytoplankton.
• Planetary thermal reservoir and regulator.
• Medium for longitudinal heat transfer and circulation.
• Major reservoir of CO₂ especially in HCO₃-, CO₃ = forms.
• Habitat for enormous diversity of living organisms, from bacteria to whales.
• Reservoirs of enormous resource potential, both renewable and non-renewable, oil, minerals, etc.; also, the location of half the planet’s carbon fixation.

Source: After Roff and Zacharias (2011)

Box 1.2 Marine goods and services that support humanity

Production services

• Food provision: Marine organisms for human consumption.
• Raw materials: Marine organisms for non-consumptive purposes, such as pharmaceuticals and genetic materials; non-living resources including minerals, sand and petroleum.

Cultural

• Identity/cultural heritage: Value associated with the marine environment, e.g. for cultural and spiritual traditions.
• Psychological health, leisure and recreation: Revitalizing the human body and mind through leisure activities ranging from visiting the beach to SCUBA diving with marine organisms in their natural environment.

Value

• Research value: Studying the many aspects of the ocean to gain a greater understanding of the world around us.
• Future unknown and speculative benefits: Currently unknown potential future uses of the marine environment and associated biodiversity.

Regulation services

• Gas and climate regulation: Balance and maintenance of the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans by marine living organisms and chemical processes.
• Flood and storm protection: Dampening of environmental disturbances by biogenic structures such as coral reefs, kelp beds and mangroves.
• Bioremediation of waste: Removal of pollutants through storage, dilution, transformation and burial.

Supporting services

• Nutrient cycling, including carbon sequestration: Storage, cycling and maintenance of nutrients by living marine organisms and physical processes.
• Biologically mediated habitat: Habitat that is provided by marine organisms.
• Resilience/resistance: Extent to which ecosystems can absorb recurrent natural and human perturbations and continue to offer the above-listed services without degrading or unexpectedly switching to alternate states.

Source: Beaumont et al. (2007) and Ruiz-Frau et al. (2011)

Box 1.3 Human perceptions on ocean health

A recent review of research into the public attitudes and perceptions on threats to the world ocean found that regardless of which state the survey was conducted in, there was agreement (70 per cent) that oceans are threatened by human activities, and 45 per cent of respondents ranked these threats as high or very high. The review collated over 32,000 respondents across 21 nations and found that while the public ranked the threats of pollution and overfishing respectively as the greatest threats, there were regional disparities based on past events (e.g. oil spills in Scotland), media campaigns (e.g. ocean plastics) and differences in opinion between the public and marine scientists (e.g. the threats of climate change). In addition, most respondents wanted to see more of the world ocean protected but were unsure how much is already protected or what the socio-economic costs of additional protection would be.

Public opinion surveys are important to policy-makers as they identify electorate priorities, where to focus education and awareness initiatives and how management and conservation programs may be improved with limited available resources.

Source: Lotze et al. (2018)

Although human capacity for massive disturbance in marine environments has been known at least since the extinction of the Steller’s Sea Cow in 1868, the plight of the oceans did not become a public concern until the appeals in the 1950s and 1960s by authors such as Rachel Carson (1962) and Jacques Cousteau. Since the 1970s, the steadily increasing output of books, films and television series along with the establishment of organizations such as Greenpeace have resulted in heightened public awareness and concern. Inter-governmental efforts to better manage the marine environment began in earnest with international conventions such as the London Dumping Convention (1972), the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (1978), the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992). More recently, under the Paris Agreement (2015) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992), states have gradually begun to recognize the importance of the global ocean in meeting targets and ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs).

Notwithstanding these efforts, human uses and impacts on the ocean continue unabated and the diversity of life in our oceans is now being dramatically altered by rapidly increasing and potentially irreversible human activities. Approximately 40 per cent of the world’s population and 60 per cent of the world’s economic production are concentrated in a 100km swath along the world’s coasts. Twenty-one of the world’s 33 mega cities are coastal, and it is estimated that by 2020 up to 75 per cent of the world’s 7.5 billion people may be living within 60km of the coastal zone (Martínez et al., 2007; UN, 2017).

Human impacts on the oceans can be broadly categorized as a result of overharvesting, pollution, habitat loss, introduced species and global climate change/ocean acidification. The following sections provide a brief discussion of these impacts on the marine environment. It should be noted, however, that these impacts do interact, often in ways detrimental to ocean health. These negative interactions are termed cumulative or synergistic effects. The seemingly rational regulation and management of individual sectors generally fails to consider the collective impacts of other sectoral activities on either the environment, public health or human use of the resource, sometimes resulting in unintended negative consequences to ecological systems and human well-being. Cumulative effects may be localized (e.g. pollution discharge) or global (e.g. climate change) and may be acute (e.g. overharvesting a fishery) or enduring (e.g. disposed radionuclides).

Overharvesting

Unsustainable harvesting is perhaps the most serious threat to marine environments worldwide. Overharvesting is not a new phenomenon in the oceans. Historically, human cultures either removed particular species and moved on to harvesting others, or other areas, or had to develop methods of regulating the timing and amount of harvest in order to avoid over-exploitation. With the advent of the industrial revolution in the mid to late 1800s came the increasing power to fish in ways hitherto unheard of: Steam-trawling the seafloor, fishing further offshore, and mechanically winching on board large nets and animals. Species such as whales and offshore pelagic fish (tuna, swordfish) became accessible to those willing to take the risks. Most whale species have been reduced to levels where they are considered endangered or threatened. Most populations of palatable fish stocks, particularly the larger fish, have been seriously depleted (e.g. Pauly et al., 1998; Worm et al., 2006).

From a western perspective, the importance of marine fisheries to global food security is often overlooked. In North America and many parts of Europe, seafood is simply another source of protein for consumers to choose. Elsewhere, over one billion people depend on seafood as their primary source of protein, and 3.1 billion people rely on seafood for at least 20 per cent of their protein. Fishing has recently been estimated to employ 34 million people in full- or part-time jobs, producing 81.5 million tonnes of seafood in 2014. The first-sale value of the world’s fisheries is estimated at $US 100 billion (FAO, 2017).

Be that as it may, the sustainability of marine capture fisheries has recently been shown to be at risk. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) currently reports that 31.4 per cent of the world’s fisheries are now overexploited, depleted or recovering, 58.1 per cent are fully exploited and only 10.5 per cent under exploited or moderately exploited (FAO, 2017). For context, in 1974, the corresponding percentages were 10, 50 and 40 per cent, respectively. Global catches peaked in 1996 and, for the past 15 years, have been relatively stable at a level approximately 10 per cent less than 1996 (FAO, 2017). The European Commission has determined that for the European fish stocks where stock status is known, only a third are currently managed for sustained future production (CEC, 2008).

The status of high seas stocks (i.e. those beyond national jurisdictions) is even less well known. Of the 17 Atlantic fish stocks managed under the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), six are collapsed and only two are considered to be sustainable (NAFO, 2016). Atlantic cod biomass is estimated at 6 per cent of historical levels and North Sea cod stocks are depressed to such a degree that recently fishers have been unable to harvest enough to meet their allowable catches, and each year further reductions are recommended. In 2018, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) recommended a 47 per cent reduction to catches of cod in the North Sea, eastern English Channel and Skagerrak Region (ICES, 2018).

A closer look at certain aspects of marine capture fisheries shows that 50–70 per cent of pelagic predators (i.e. tunas, swordfish) have been removed by fishing. Fishing pressure continues to shift towards lower trophic levels as apex predators decline; this has been termed ‘fishing down marine food webs’ (Pauly et al., 1998). Furthermore, the global fishing fleet is far larger than what necessity dictates, especially since technological innovations increase the ability to catch fish. This surplus fishing capacity is underwritten by $US 30–40 billion in annual subsidies by most fishing nations, thus providing no incentive to reduce fishing effort (Sumaila et al., 2016). In addition, evidence suggests that fishing efforts from port-based fisheries have increased over the past three decades at upwards of 3 per cent per decade. As such, more fishers are chasing fewer fish; if one were to imagine the global fishing fleet as a country, it would be the 18th largest oil-consuming nation on earth.

Another serious problem is the unintended harvest of species. An estimated 20 per cent of the global fisheries’ catch constitutes unwanted by-catch that is discarded. Shrimp trawl fisheries produce the largest by-catch and small pelagic fisheries the least. By-catch also consists of the incidental take of endangered marine mammals, turtles and seabirds although recent advances in gear technology are reducing these impacts.

There are signs that some fisheries are on a path to sustainability. In the United States and New Zealand, the numbers of overfished stocks have been steadily improving, from over 20 per cent a decade ago to about 15 per cent currently (Fisheries New Zealand, 2017; NOAA, 2017). Canadian northern cod stocks off of Newfoundland and Labrador – fished to collapse between the 1960s and 1990s – have seen recent growth rates of up to 30 per cent, indicating that even stocks thought to be fished past the point of no return can recover if protected (Rose and Rowe, 2015).

Pollution

Pollution – from a myriad of sources – has impacted every marine system on earth. As a result of global transport mechanisms, contamination has spread to all continents and depths. Indigenous human populations in Arctic areas have the highest contaminant levels of any people on earth, a result of ingesting marine fish and mammals which bioaccumulate toxins due to their high trophic levels. Up to 90 per cent of pollution entering the ocean is derived from land-based sources; the remainder is a result of deliberate or accidental dumping. It has been assumed that land-based sources of pollutants reaching the oceans is primarily via rivers; however, transport of polluta...