Global Oceans Governance: New and Emerging Issues

Abstract

Increased interest in oceans is leading to new and renewed global governance efforts directed toward ocean issues in areas of food production, biodiversity conservation, industrialization, global environmental change, and pollution. Global oceans governance efforts face challenges and opportunities related to the nature of oceans and to actors involved in, the scale of, and knowledge informing their governance. We review these topics generally and in relation to nine new and emerging issues: small-scale fisheries (SSFs), aquaculture, biodiversity conservation on the high seas, large marine protected areas (LMPAs), tuna fisheries, deep-sea mining, ocean acidification (OA), blue carbon (BC), and plastics pollution.

Blue growth: savior or ocean grabbing?

“…In line with the ecosystem services framework approach to nature-society relations, the report (and a number of follow-up reports, e.g. Herr et al 2012) stresses how coastal ecosystems through their ability to capture and store carbon provide a major 'service' in the fight against climate change -as they sequester carbon more quickly than terrestrial ecosystems do (Campbell et al 2016). This service, the report argues, makes coastal ecosystems a key tool to mitigate global greenhouse gas emissions.…”

Navigating a just and inclusive path towards sustainable oceans

“…This is not surprising as a recent review of coastal and ocean planning processes showed that less than 50% included social data and only 10.8% of social data were spatially characterized [51]. Similar questions are being asked about social inclusion and the impacts of the blue economy -including in aquaculture, exploration and mining, oil and gas extraction, energy development, bio-prospecting, marine tourism, and carbon markets [6,12,52]. Where the assumption of some proponents of the blue economy seems to be that development will lead to net social and economic good [53], past research has shown how the economic benefits of blue economic development may fail to accrue to local people, and those that do are often shared inequitably, and also that the social and environmental burdens (e.g., waste, water shortages, pollution) may be considerable for nearby communities [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61].…”

Healing Brazil's Blue Amazon: The Role of Knowledge Networks in Nurturing Cross-Scale Transformations at the Frontlines of Ocean Sustainability

“…These challenges are to be addressed by social innovators, for instance in the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the adoption of ocean sustainability as one of the 17 SDGs (Visbeck et al, 2014;ICSU, ISSC, 2015); in the preparations for the negotiation of a new implementing agreement on biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (high-seas) under the United Nations Convention Law of the Sea; in the completion of the first World Ocean Assessment (2016-www.worldoceanassessment.org); in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030; and in the Paris Climate Agreement within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2016). These processes (amongst others, see review by Campbell et al, 2016) have led to increased interest, and renewed global ocean related efforts in a variety of policy fields.…”