Oceans Reform in Aotearoa New Zealand: a just transition?

The concept of a ‘just transition’ has become strongly linked to climate change and the idea that the process of decarbonising society needs to be done in a way that is fair to all. However, it is equally relevant to other areas in which a transition is needed. This article explores what a just transition might mean for the reform of Aotearoa New Zealand’s oceans management system. It argues that the concepts of justice and fairness are a useful way not only to manage the process of change, but also to frame and justify why change is needed. Different conceptions of justice – distributional equity, environmental justice, intergenerational equity, ecological justice and procedural justice – are all important lenses to look through when asking the hard questions about what the future of our seas should look like.

Numbers vs. Narratives: the importance of integrating social science perspectives in ocean sustainability research

<p>Many disciplines study the ocean and its uses from different perspectives. Recently, there has been a growing awareness about the inseparability of the social and ecological systems and that achieving sustainable use of ocean resources will require the integration of different types of knowledge and disciplines. In this presentation, we will draw from the experience of two early career interdisciplinary scientists to present examples of the role social sciences can play in achieving sustainable oceans management, how and why it should be integrated with other ocean disciplines. More specifically, we will present how a qualitative research approaches to understanding seafood sustainability governance and community/rights-based management makes an important contribution to sustainable ocean management. We conclude that to achieve ocean sustainability, which is a societal problem, we not only need numbers but also the social sciences and their narratives.</p>

Governing Africa’s Seas in the Neoliberal Era

As blue growth (widely accepted as the sustainable development in the marine and maritime sectors as a whole) is gaining increasing traction, oceans and seas are seen as new frontiers for global capitalism. In African countries this trend has spurred a new wave of appropriation and control of maritime spaces for the blue economy. At a time of unprecedented expansion of global production and trade, the African continent is facing new challenges in maritime governance. The governance of the seas has profoundly changed in the 21st century with the explosion of maritime transport, the globalization of the exploitation of marine resources, and the growing concern for environmental issues. The idea of an integrated policy of seas and oceans management became a cornerstone of international and national instruments aiming to regulate maritime circulation and exploitation of marine resources. Integrated maritime management policies put emphasis on liberalization of the marine sectors and resources and the security agenda, taken in its broad sense to guarantee freedom of trade and environmental sustainability. These efforts, whose putative purpose is to combine economic, social, and environmental goals, has resulted in an unsteady balance between different sectors, scales, and actors and opened the door to controversies, dissent, and politics. Although the priorities of this global policy agenda continue to transform the maritime governance in Africa, the African states and societies are also actively reshaping it. While African states alter international maritime policies according to their own ends, these are also constantly molded through struggles over norms, resources, and spaces and conflicts arising from the dialectics of possession and dispossession. The text focuses on the four key areas of maritime governance: ports, offshore exploitation, security, and environment. Even though from the perspective of integrated maritime governance these fields are interwoven, they are subject to particular policies. Hence, while focusing on policies in each area separately, it also analyzes their relationships with each other in order to illuminate the complexity of power configurations.

Beyond rhetoric: navigating the conceptual tangle towards effective implementation of the ecosystem approach to oceans management

The ecosystem approach is widely considered the best paradigm for environmental management and oceans management. With such ample endorsement, one could expect that the concept has an unambiguous definition and that its implications for management are clear. That is not the case. The concept has provoked an extensive academic and practical debate over the last 30 years. Early work focused on debates about the concept of the ecosystem approach, its guiding principles, and consistent use of terminology. As those questions were progressively clarified, the work has focused on its implementation. This paper provides a three-part literature review of these developments. The first part analyzes the current understanding of the ecosystem approach, its consensual elements or principles, the differing terminology coined in the literature, and three sources of persisting confusion around the concept. The paper addresses in particular one of those sources of confusion: the goal of the ecosystem approach. The second part focuses on implementation frameworks and strategies, with particular focus on objective-based and adaptive management frameworks and the pivotal role of ecosystem indicators in understanding, assessing, and managing ecosystems. The third part reviews the recognition of ecosystems and the ecosystem approach in international law, including an analysis of nonbinding instruments, treaty law (with particular reference to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the 1995 United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement, and the Convention on Biological Diversity), and the practical regional implementation of the ecosystem approach to fisheries and oceans management. The literature review demonstrates that, despite some persisting differing interpretations, the ecosystem approach has moved from the theory of aspirational discourse to the practice of implementation. It has proven successful in enhancing the understanding of ecosystems’ structure, function, and dynamics; increasing awareness of environmental problems; and developing policy and research agendas and priorities. However, the jury is still out in relation to its capacity to influence human behavior through direct management actions. Many factors concur to this limitation, but two stand out: the inadequacy of traditional regulatory frameworks and institutional arrangements to capture the complexity, uncertainty, and variability of ecosystems; and the reluctance of the international community to embrace a global, comprehensive, and substantive international obligation that effectively protects the ecological systems on which life on Earth depends.

The Oxford Handbook of the Law of the Sea

Human activities have taken place in the world's oceans and seas for most of human history. With such a vast number of ways in which the oceans can be used for trade, exploited for natural resources and fishing, as well as concerns over maritime security, the legal systems regulating the rights and responsibilities of nations in their use of the world's oceans have long been a crucial part of international law. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea comprehensively defined the parameters of the law of the sea in 1982, and since the Convention was concluded it has seen considerable development. This book provides an analysis of its current debates and controversies, both theoretical and practical. It consists of forty chapters divided into six parts. First, it explains the origins and evolution of the law of the sea, with a particular focus upon the role of key publicists such as Hugo Grotius and John Selden, the gradual development of state practice, and the creation of the 1982 UN Convention. It then reviews the components which comprise the maritime domain, assessing their definition, assertion, and recognition. It also analyzes the ways in which coastal states or the international community can assert control over areas of the sea, and the management and regulation of each of the maritime zones. This includes investigating the development of the mechanisms for maritime boundary delimitation, and the decisions of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. The book also discusses the actors and intuitions that impact on the law of the sea, considering their particular rights and interests, in particular those of state actors and the principle law of the sea institutions. Then it focuses on operational issues, investigating longstanding matters of resource management and the integrated oceans framework. This includes a discussion and assessment of the broad and increasingly influential integrated oceans management governance framework that interacts with the traditional law of the sea. It considers six distinctive regions that have been pivotal to the development of the law of the sea, before finally providing a detailed analysis of the critical contemporary issues facing the law of the sea. These include threatened species, climate change, bioprospecting, and piracy.