It provides food in the form of fish and shellfish—about 200 billion pounds are caught each year. It’s used for transportation—both travel and shipping. It provides a treasured source of recreation for humans. It is mined for minerals (salt, sand, gravel, and some manganese, copper, nickel, iron, and cobalt can be found in the deep sea) and drilled for crude oil.

Human activities (Fishing Facts)

The oceans have been fished for thousands of years and are an integral part of human society. Fish have been important to the world economy for all of these years, starting with the Viking trade of cod and then continuing with fisheries like those found in Lofoten, Europe, Italy, Portugal, Spain and India. Fisheries of today provide about 16% of the total world’s protein with higher percentages occurring in developing nations. Fisheries are still enormously important to the economy and well-being of communities.

More information:https://www.marinebio.org/

Lack of common purpose

The sea and its ecosystem services are a common re­source. Unlike privately owned properties on land, for example, they do not belong to individuals but are available to the whole community.

Many of the resources in the sea are finite, fish stocks being one example. If individual nations or companies help themselves to the sea’s resources as they see fit, sooner or later these resources will be exhausted. Today many fish populations are already classified as overfished due to excessive catches over the years. Economists use the term “commons” to talk about publicly available resources (like the fish in the sea) which are freely usable but limited in supply. Originally the concept referred to land areas such as fields or pastures used collectively by the citizens of a community.

The problem with the use of commons has always been that those interested in using this kind of resource find themselves competing with each other. If one com­pany or country makes use of a common resource, less of it is available for the other stakeholders. From a purely economic viewpoint, it is worthwhile for a company or country to exploit these resources to the fullest possible extent in order to secure the maximum possible share and generate profits accordingly.

In past decades this approach has led to ever more serious harm to the marine environment. Unrestrained ­fishery is one of the uses of the commons that will tend to cause such harm. Likewise, the discharge of pollutants from industry or from municipalities into the sea is an-other example of a use of marine commons that is ulti-mately selfish. Individual companies, municipalities or countries save themselves large expenditures for the disposal of pollutants by making use of coastal waters as a free ­drainage tank for effluents. For the protection of commons to make sense, on the other hand, many users or states need to cooperate.

The Convention on the Law of the Sea sets the rights and obligations of State Parties in relation to the law of the sea and ocean affairs, thereby providing a global ocean governance framework that is almost universally accepted. The Convention is a living example of how national interests are balanced with global interests regarding the exploration and conservation of the ocean (Long, 2007). National interests included the claims for the extension of the maritime spaces. Global interests were mainly the expanding threat of unregulated natural resources exploration . Consequently, the United Nations General Assembly convened the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea—UNCLOS III in 1973 to discuss ocean matters in plenitude . It was only after 9 years of long and intense negotiations at the UN that the Convention was finally adopted in 1982 and entered into force in 1994. Today, it is the globally recognized regime dealing with all matters relating to the law of the sea, being ratified by 167 States Parties and the EU (United Nations.

The ocean is highly impacted by human activities, and ambitious levels of science are urgently needed to support decision making in order to achieve sustainability. Due to the high cost and risk associated with ocean exploration and monitoring in time and space, vast areas of the oceanic social ecological system remain under-sampled or unknown. Governments have recognized that no single nation can on its own fill these scientific knowledge gaps, and this has led to a number of agreements to support international scientific collaboration and the exchange of information and capacity.

This paper reviews current discussions on ocean science diplomacy, i.e., the intersection of science with international ocean affairs. Ocean science is intrinsically connected with diplomacy in supporting negotiations toward a more sustainable future. Diplomacy supports essential aspects of scientific work such as capacity building, technology and information/knowledge exchange, and access and sharing of research platforms. Ocean science diplomacy underlies the work of many intergovernmental organizations that provide scientific guidance, such as the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).

To illustrate how critical science diplomacy is to global ocean affairs, the link below examines examples of the influence of ocean science diplomacy. Furthermore, it discusses the utility of ocean science diplomacy in support of the UN 2030 agenda, and the UN Decade of Ocean Science.

More information: https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/science_society/ocean_policy/

Marine protection is a matter that concerns everyone. But the question remains, how can use of the sea be regulated and governed to ensure that it is in fact sustain­able? In this context researchers often speak of “governance”. Much like the term “sustainability”, no standard definition of the expression “ocean governance” currently exists. The Club of Rome, an international non-governmental organization (NGO) and expert panel founded in 1968, which deals with the negative consequences of economic growth, attempted to come up with a universal ­definition of the term. Accordingly, “ocean governance” was framed as the “the means by which ocean affairs are governed by governments, local communities, industries, non-governmental organizations, other stakeholders, through national and international laws, policies, customs, traditions, culture, and related institutions and processes.”

More Information: https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-4/politics-and-the-oceans/on-the-difficulty-of-governing-the-sea/

IOCAFRICA of UNESCO supported the African Group of Negotiators Experts Support (AGNES) in the unpacking of the IPCC SROCC into four policy briefs in order to cement the Africa position on ocean negotiations at COP 26 in Glasgow.

The four policy briefs are on:

1. Policy brief 8 Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low-Lying Islands Coasts and Communities
2. Policy brief 9 Changing Changing Oceans, Marine Ecosystems and Dependent Communities
3. Policy brief 10 Extremes, Abrupt Changes and Managing Risks
4. Policy brief 11 Climate Change and the Sustainable Ocean Economy