Routledge Handbook of Ocean Resources and Management

Hance D. Smith, Juan Luis Suárez de Vivero, Tundi S. Agardy, Hance D. Smith, Juan Luis Suárez de Vivero, Tundi S. Agardy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781136294815
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Oceanography

This comprehensive handbook provides a global overview of ocean resources and management by focusing on critical issues relating to human development and the marine environment, their interrelationships as expressed through the uses of the sea as a resource, and the regional expression of these themes. The underlying approach is geographical, with prominence given to the biosphere, political arrangements and regional patterns – all considered to be especially crucial to the human understanding required for the use and management of the world's oceans.

Part one addresses key themes in our knowledge of relationships between people and the sea on a global scale, including economic and political issues, and understanding and managing marine environments. Part two provides a systematic review of the uses of the sea, grouped into food, ocean space, materials and energy, and the sea as an environmental resource. Part three on the geography of the sea considers management strategies especially related to the state system, and regional management developments in both core economic regions and the developing periphery.

Chapter 23 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203115398.ch23

1

THE WORLD OCEAN AND THE HUMAN PAST AND PRESENT

Hance D. Smith, Juan Luis Suárez de Vivero and Tundi S. Agardy

Introduction

In the rapidly expanding pantheon of planets currently being discovered within our galaxy, Earth may be regarded as particularly unusual in that just over seven-tenths of the surface is ocean, and yet the dominant life form – human beings – can only realistically inhabit the remaining three-tenths of the planet that is land surface.

Although humankind does not naturally inhabit the marine environment, nearly all the uses of the land have their counterparts in the uses of the sea. Around these sea uses are woven an apparently bewildering range of ways of life – a sea of many worlds, each with economic, environmental and social components. Thus this Handbook begins with a closer look at the cultural worlds of the sea. Once this has been established, the discussion turns to the temporal dimension, exemplified by the ceaseless quest over the past several centuries for, above all, economic development, which has so often been equated with human progress (Paine 2013).

To many the drive for progress seems to be unstoppable, not to say uncontrolled. However, this is not really the case. Rather there is a dynamic interplay between the impetus for development on the one hand, and the influences of governance and management of development on the other, which is the third theme of this chapter. Underlying the processes of both development and governance is the nature of the human mind, which at the present juncture of human history continues to advance especially in scientific knowledge and understanding and apply it through innumerable technologies to further both development and governance.

Finally the discussion returns full circle to the virtual kaleidoscope of regional patterns of sea use, impacts, regional development, governance and management of the marine environment, to conclude this introductory chapter to the Handbook.

The worlds of the sea

The starting point for understanding ocean resources and management revolves around the twin ideas of sea-based ways of life or maritime cultures on the one hand, and the uses of the sea viewed primarily as an economic phenomenon on the other. Maritime cultures have three essential components, namely, an economic dimension focused on sea uses; an environmental dimension focused on the sea itself; and a social dimension focused on human societies. As clearly seen by the World Commission on Environment and Development, these three components lie at the heart of the processes of development, sustainable or otherwise (WCED 1987). The interactions are dynamic, but there are discernible patterns on a range of timescales, which have resulted in a distinctive global pattern of culture regions encompassing both land and sea.

Figure 1.1 Maritime culture regions and development

Source: Map created by Azmath Jaleel, based on Broek and Webb 1973; and Smith 1994.

Critical to understanding is the timescale since the end of the last glaciation, and especially the past 6,000 years, at the beginning of which global eustatic sea level reached its present level. By around 4,000 years ago there had emerged a geographical pattern of culture regions – in history these may be termed civilisations (Figure 1.1). These are the traditional societies of Broek and Webb (1973), based either on pre-agricultural tribal forms of social organisation on the one hand, not infrequently associated with hunting and gathering economic organisation; or settled agricultural societies on the other. These agricultural societies were also partly based on urban settlements and long-distance trade networks over both land and sea.

Perhaps not surprisingly, traditional societies were and continue to be closely tied to the environmental geography of the planet. Tribal forms of social organisation and low population densities were and remain characteristic of land regions in particular, where living natural resources were and remain limited: the tropical rain forests, savannas, mangrove coasts, tropical and sub-tropical deserts, oceanic islands, sub-polar forest regions and coasts, and the truly polar settlements of the Arctic Ocean region. The later development of settled agricultural societies was concentrated in large river valleys and adjacent coasts, mainly in North Africa, south west and south Asia, and the monsoon lands to the east; together with the tropical highlands of the Americas.

Importantly, despite the enormous pace of development, especially since the ‘industrial revolution’, both tribal and traditional settled agricultural societies have often remained remarkably resilient in terms of economic and social organisation and relationships with the environment, despite being under enormous pressure from development. Only in the Americas and Australasia, where settlement by European peoples has been most intense, have these societies come closest to obliteration – but even here the resurgence of ‘First Nations’ is evident. Even more importantly, these traditional societies remain closely aligned to the evolution of language groups and belief systems – including the world’s great religions (Smart 1998) – that are of comparable temporal provenance. This remains central to contemporary understanding of both economic and political developments on both land and sea.

The contemporary economic development of the world ocean – indeed the world – has its roots in the Western European region during the second half of the fifteenth century. Ocean exploration and domination which began then was particularly associated with the gradual ending of the medieval European world order, accompanied by the expansion of European influence around the world through population movement, exploration, trade and warfare, although comparable maritime expansion was also taking place in China. For the first 250 years or so of this period, economic expansion and associated empire building was based mainly on trade, and was primarily pre-industrial in its nature. However, beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century a process of industrialisation of economic activity accelerated through a series of stages – the first of these was the ‘industrial revolution’.

From an economic standpoint, the crucial component was the application of science and technology to the industrialisation of production. From a social point of view, the industrialisation of the economy became associated with a rapidly increasing population enhanced by the same application of science and technology to the reduction of epidemic diseases, which lowered the death rate, a circumstance not immediately paralleled by a reduction in the birth rate; and the beginning of large-scale rural–urban migration. From an environmental point of view, industrialisation was based in part both initially and subsequently on use and progressive depletion of natural resources of land, sea and atmosphere. It is at this point that the evolution of sea use diverged from its pre-industrial cultural basis to intensified industrialised exploitation.

The worlds of the sea as illustrated in Figure 1.1 can thus be understood at two geographical scales. The first of these is the evolution of the maritime culture regions over the past four millennia that, although seemingly replaced by industrialisation later on, gave form to the major traditional societies that remain characteristic of most of what has become known as the ‘developing world’. The second feature is the geography of industrialisation: although the processes of industrialisation are global, the regionalisation of industrialisation is characterised by a pattern of nodal regions in which both land and marine activities are generally tightly focused. These core regions are surrounded by vast peripheral regions – in effect most of the world ocean and land areas. Especially notable are the groups of core regions on both sides of the North Atlantic and North Pacific respectively. Until nearly the end of the twentieth century the North Atlantic system of core regions was in effect the core region of the global economy (Smith 1994). Now the world is transitioning to a system in which the Pacific system of core regions has begun to overtake that of the North Atlantic, most probably to eventually produce a much larger global core region.

The development of the world ocean

Industrialisation during and since the ‘industrial revolution’, can be viewed from a maritime perspective. As already noted, the pre-industrial traditional societies were symptomatic of the organisation of the world economy before the mid-eighteenth century, even in Europe, where economic development had been based to a remarkable degree on maritime trade and empire building since the ‘age of exploration’ in the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Padfield 1999). At sea, apart from the deep sea shipping trades linking the European empires with Europe itself, and the associated naval activities, by far the most important activity was traditional fisheries. A few fisheries were based on large ocean-going vessels, notably whaling and cod fishing; most were traditional open boat fisheries using lines and nets, operating close to shore.

The industrial revolution changed all that, although initially by a simple scaling up of traditional technologies and economies, rather than by application of new science and technology. The ‘industrial revolution’, properly speaking, encompassed the decades between 1780 and 1830. During this period both merchant ships and warships tended to increase in size and sophistication of design, and significant merchant shipping regulation was introduced in Britain, already by then the world’s leading maritime trading nation, gaining full military mastery of the seas after the defeat of the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. But ships remained sailing ships. In commercial fisheries – still powered by sail and oar – there was enormous expansion of activity in Western Europe associated with economic expansion, population increase and urbanisation, but little real sign of overfishing on any significant scale, despite not infrequent politically inspired protestations to the contrary. The exception was in whaling and sealing, where adverse impacts on whale and seal populations were evident in regions as far apart as the Arctic and Southern Ocean (Tonnessen and Johnsen 1982).

The next stage of development, from around 1830 until around 1870 witnessed first a prolonged economic downturn in the 1830s and 1840s in the core economic region of the preceding industrial revolution, namely, the British Isles (between 1801 until 1922 the British Isles were a single state – the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) and adjacent coastlands of north west Europe. There were major changes, notably the liberalisation and subsequent expansion of international seaborne trade through the repeal of the UK Navigation and Corn Laws in the 1840s. There were also significant technological changes in shipping, pioneered as always by the military, and notably the introduction of the ironclad warships powered by both sail and steam, but also including the development of fast sailing ships called clippers for both deep and short sea trades, as well as continued scaling up of commercial vessels. However, although the first crossings of the Atlantic by steam-powered ships took place in the 1830s, steam power was not widespread. When steamships were widely adopted, this took the form of paddle steamers, rather than screw steamers. In fisheries also, sail remained supreme, and gear remained conventional lines and drift nets.

It was during the next stage of economic development, between the 1870s and 1930s, that the transformational influence of technology upon both sea uses and the marine environment became undeniable. As during the previous stage, there was a long-run economic downturn in the later 1870s and early 1880s. However, this time the processes of change were more profound. Large-scale rural–urban migration occurred in Europe and North America, associated with similarly large-scale emigration of Europeans to the temperate and subtropical lands of their empires in North and South America, southern Africa and Australasia, with millions of migrants carried on the new ocean liner trades. In the world of merchant shipping the balance between sail and steam shifted decisively to steam after the mid 1880s, associated with the introduction of steel shipbuilding, boilers and triple expansion steam engines (Graham 1956). The key trans-oceanic canals were opened: Suez in 1869 and Panama in 1914. Ocean-going sailing ships remained economical only on long ocean routes for bulk cargoes, up to the 1930s. By the outbreak of the First World War warships were being equipped with steam turbines.

In fisheries, the introduction of steam was decisive: steam engines for both drifters and trawlers, together with steam capstans and winches respectively for handling the gear led to clear evidence of overfishing from the 1890s onwards. This was undeniable, despite the fact that as late as 1883 the Chief Inspector of Fisheries for the United Kingdom averred that the fish resources of the ocean were unlimited (Huxley 1883). Overfishing triggered the establishment of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea in 1902 (Rozwadowski 2002). There was a short-lived recovery of north west European fisheries in the 1920s, after the interregnum of the First World War, but it was not to last. In whaling, the combination of steam whalers and the Svend Foyn harpoon led to the collapse of the centuries-old Great Northern Whale Fishery in the North Atlantic in the 1880s. Whaling in the Southern Ocean began in 1904, and peaked with the introduction of factory ships in the mid 1920s. By the 1930s decline had already set in. Meanwhile, the beginnings of large-scale coastal and marine recreation began in Europe especially with the twin large-scale introduction of the railways associated with the development of seaside resorts; and the introduction of cruising by steamship along the Norwegian coast, in the Baltic, and throughout the Mediterranean.

From the later 1940s until the 1990s a new stage of economic development took place. As with the previous stages, economic depression characterised the transition from the previous stage throughout the 1930s, complicated by the Second World War. Although a true geographical globalisation had been evident from the second stage – around 1850 (Ashworth 1967), this new stage witnessed rapid economic expansion and associated technological change worldwide, in all the nodal regions illustrated in Figure 1.1. Full economic integration of the global economic system had not yet taken place (Korotayev and Tsirel 2010). In commercial shipping key developments were the replacement of steam by diesel; specialisation of ship types; the disappearance of the ocean liner trades, lost to air travel after 1960; and the introduction of unitised shipping or containerisation in the 1970s, allied to the efficient logistical systems of intermodal transport. Ship sizes increased enormously, especially cruise ships, oil tankers and dry bulk ships, while roll-on/roll-off ferries began to dominate short sea shipping. Naval power came to depend upon the nuclear powered and armed submarine and the aircraft carrier in a world in which integrated land, sea and air combined operations became the norm, having been pioneered by the invasion of Normandy in 1944, towards the end of the Second World War (Gardiner 1992–2004).

In fisheries, steam was also replaced by diesel, and ever improving fishing gears – especially trawls and seines. Global fish production increased between three and four times between the late 1940s and the 1990s, then levelled off; aquaculture further increased fish production, especially from the 1980s onwards. By this time overfishing had become a serious issue in many fisheries. Whaling from the United Kingdom and Norway ceased in the early 1960s, and a moratorium was finally agreed and implemented worldwide in 1986. Meanwhile, traditional seaside holidays were increasingly supplanted by marine activity holidays, including boating; cruising expanded enormously; and air travel made possible seaside holidays thousands of miles from the industrial core regions, especially to the Mediterranean, Caribbean and tropical oceanic islands. Other uses of the sea came into their own on a large scale, notably offshore hydrocarbon exploitation; waste disposal; large-scale marine science; and marine natural and human heritage conservation.

The world is now entering the early part of a new stage of development, considered further in Chapter 38. These changes may be viewed as cycles exhibiting common features. A key driving feature of these stages or cycles is the interplay between economic and technological factors (Smith 2000; Korotayev and Tsirel 2010). Thus the early sequence of events is associated with rapid economic expansion, accompanied by varying degrees of technological innovation. This process is very clearly seen with regard to the most important maritime uses: shipping, naval activity and fisheries – from the industrial revolution onwards. In the later twentieth century stage the process can be seen spreading to all the major uses of the sea. The successive peaks in the cycles or stages are determined by the limits of economic expansion, after which economic decline sets in, a process that ends in a ‘gale of creative destruction’ (Schumpeter 1942) affecting all sectors of the economy, including all uses of the sea. During this stage there is profound economic re-structuring including the enterprises that make up the private sector, and this sets the scene for the beginnings of new industries that characterise the next stage. Inevitably these changes also are associated with varying degrees of social and political change, including changes affecting the nature of governance by the state.

The importance of these stages for the present lies with their significance for relationships between sea uses on the one hand, and...