A new perspective.

As The Economist observed in 1998, to make the most of the water that surrounds us it must become more like the land, with owners, laws, and limits. "Fishermen must behave more like ranchers than hunters. Polluters should pay something for the damage caused by their pollution. Planners will have to balance the natural habitat against development and prepare, if necessary, for a rapid rise in sea level. Should the world's population double, mankind may have to treat the coastal waters like prime agricultural land"

The foundation for sustainable management of the world's oceans was put in place with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1994. UNCLOS establishes national sovereignty over marine resources lying within coastal waters. Although it exercises the greatest rights within 12 miles of the coast, lesser controls apply to waters of the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

By establishing property rights that apply to the species and habitats found within coastal waters, the UN says the treaty provides countries with some incentive to better manage these resources. It describes the EEZs as one of the most revolutionary features of the Convention: "Simply put, it recognizes the right of coastal states to jurisdiction over the resources of some 38 million square nautical miles of ocean space. To the coastal state falls the right to exploit, develop, manage, and conserve all resources--fish or oil, gas or gravel, nodules or sulphur--to be found in the waters, on the ocean floor, and in the subsoil of an area extending 200 miles from its shore."

The treaty also obligates parties to protect and preserve the marine environment by cooperating regionally and globally, and to adopt laws and regulations to deal with land-based sources of marine pollution. And, it provides a framework for establishing maritime zones and for regulating fishing and marine scientific research.

UNCLOS was drafted in 1982, adopted in 1983, and entered into force in 1994. It sets out international law covering:

* Exploration and exploitation of deep seabed mineral resources;

* The extent of coastal-state jurisdiction, including rights and obligations of states in their management of coastal economic zones;

* Designation of boundaries between opposite and adjacent states;

* Navigation and overflight rights on the high seas, and in territorial seas, straits, and archipelagos;

* The rights of landlocked and geographically disadvantaged states;

* Protection of the marine environment;

* Freedom of marine scientific research; and,

* Peaceful settlement of disputes.

In short, the UN describes UNCLOS as an unprecedented attempt by the international community to regulate all aspects of the resources of the sea and uses of the ocean, and thus bring a stable order to mankind's very source of life. "Possibly the most significant legal instrument of (the 20th) century."

Setting out laws to manage oceans is one matter, implementing them is quite another.

The UN's International Maritime Organization (IMO), for example, passes lots of nice regulations that everybody ignores because it is powerless to enforce them. William Langewiesche summed the situation up in an article in The Atlantic Monthly in September 2003: "The point is, the ocean may look tight in print, much as many failing nations still do by formal description--but the entire structure built to regulate it (the IMO) is something of a fantasy floating free of the realities at sea." Basically, the laws exist but member states are free to adopt them or not, and many don't have the expertise or the will to enforce them.

Among Canada's recent attempts at controlling the sea is its Ocean Strategy released by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in 2002. It is designed to set the policy direction for oceans management in Canada and implement the Oceans Act passed in 1996. The government's stated aim is "to ensure that decisions about every activity in or around Canada's oceans are cooperative, environmentally and economically sustainable, and socially responsible." But critics say the government has been dragging its feet on making any real progress in developing ocean management plans or designating marine protected areas as the Act intended.

In the October 2004 Throne Speech the government announced that it was developing an Oceans Action Plan but details were in short supply.

While there have been plenty of announcements about the development of programs on ocean management, some say there has been too little action, largely because of a lack of funding. In her 2004 annual report, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development (Johanne Gelinas) said the federal government may have good intentions when it comes to the environment, but it doesn't follow through on its commitments. Salmon stocks were among the Commissioner's concerns: "This is the fourth time since 1997 that we have reported on salmon-related issues and we continue to see little progress in managing key risks," she said, adding that more action was needed. She identified, for example, gaps in information on Pacific salmon stocks and their habitat, and in scientific knowledge about the potential environmental effects of salmon aquaculture, including diseases and sea lice infestation. And, she said, the federal and provincial governments need to better collaborate to manage fish habitat, undertake research, approve aquaculture site applications, and share information.

Two months later, in December 2004, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced a revised Wild Salmon Policy (WSP) for British Columbia and Yukon. It was being presented to First Nations, environmental groups, stakeholders, and the public for review and comment. The aim of the policy is to restore and maintain healthy and diverse salmon populations and their habitat: it is the extension of another draft policy developed in 2000. The government also announced the start of a similar policy for conservation of wild salmon on Canada's Atlantic Coast.

The Canadian government of course is not alone as a target for criticism. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said that around the world, 177 nations have coastlines but only about 92 of them had developed coastal and near-shore management plans by 2002. That was nearly twice the 1992 figure but most countries hadn't moved from planning to implementation. The WWF explained that it's a tough task because coastal areas contain several different jurisdictions (local, regional, and national), and involve different interests. "In Brazil, for instance, coastal zone planners have to consult 20 levels of government. In the United Kingdom, 48 sub-national units of government, from Parliament to town councils, have authority to create an autonomous or semi-autonomous coastal management strategy."

The challenge worth pursuing for economic as well as ecological reasons.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. One of Canada's biggest research projects involved scores of researchers and graduate students in a five-year project, Coasts Under Stress. Started in 2000, some 70 investigators (in the fields of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities) and at least 60 postdoctoral fellows, research associates, and graduate students studied Canada's East and West Coasts. The $6.2 million project was jointly funded by the Social Sconces and Humanities Research Council and Science and Engineering Research Canada. The University of Victoria and Newfoundland's Memorial University each kicked in a million dollars as well. The project focusses on traditionally resource-based, rural communities that have suffered both economically and socially as a result of deleted fisheries, uncertain timber supplies, closed mines, and environmental degradation. In November 2004, the group had almost completed its research and started to compile it in various reports. Open a file on the project and do follow up studies on the results of their efforts.

2. In the Throne Speech, delivered in October 2004, the federal government announced plans to move forward on Canada's Oceans Action Plan through the development and use of new oceans technology, integrated management, and the enhancement and enforcement of fisheries and oceans regulations, especially those concerning "straddling stocks." Follow up on what specifically the government is doing.

A DIFFERENT TYPE OF WATER PARK

Marine researchers at Oregon State University said in a 2002 report that the time has come for a new "ocean ethic." They say this ought to be based philosophically on the same concepts that led to the creation in the U.S. and elsewhere of national parks and wilderness areas, in which multiple plant and animal species have flourished while still providing enjoyment for millions of visitors.

"The goal of this new ethic would be to protect and maintain healthy marine ecosystems ... the abundance of life, and the productivity, diversity, and resilience of ecosystems in the ocean," says the report. Researchers argued that while five percent of the U.S.'s land area is protected, less than 1/25 of one percent of its territorial waters are protected, and the other 99.96 percent is in the process of being seriously degraded.

On a global scale, they pointed to the success of nature reserves around the world: In South Africa at the turn of the 20th century, the land that later became the Kruger National Park was home to less than a dozen elephants, only three black rhinoceros, a locally extinct population of the white rhinoceros, and a degraded landscape. By 2002, it contained about 8,000 elephants, 300 black rhinoceros, and 2,000 white rhinoceros, as well as 336 species of trees, 49 species of fish, 34 species of amphibians, 114 reptilian species, 507 bird species, and 147 species of mammals.

Canada is starting to think along these lines too. In May 2004, Ottawa declared that a deep underwater canyon, about 200 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia in the western North Atlantic, that's teeming with sea life and rich in rare coral is a marine protected area under the Oceans Act. The canyon near Sable Island, called the Gully, is the largest marine canyon in the western North Atlantic; it's home to sea birds, fish, dolphins, sperm whales, and the endangered northern bottlenose whale. It also has 21 identified species of rare, deep-sea corals. The Gully is about 80 kilometres long and 50 kitometres wide, and reaches down more than 2,500 metres at its mouth. The designation is a safeguard against pollution and fishing, as well as oil and gas exploration that could harm the sea life that thrives there. The Gully is the second of what federal officials hope will become a system of 11 marine protected areas on Canadian coasts and in the Arctic over the next decade. The first protected zone was the Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents off the Pacific coast. The area, which is southwest of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, hosts rich, diverse ecosystems that are unique on Earth, including 12 species of marine life that do not exist anywhere else in the world, and 60 additional unique species.

SMALL AND VULNERABLE

The Law of the Sea Convention affords all states the right to manage marine resources within their 200-nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). The problem for most developing countries is they don't have the money or the manpower to enforce regulations over such a vast expanse of ocean.

Small islands in the South Pacific, for example, are dwarfed by their EEZs, which are often 1,000 times larger than the islands which have to manage them.

A recent summit (January 2005) on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) highlighted the challenges facing these tiny nations. The meeting on ocean management for SIDS pointed out that their marine energy resources could provide all the renewable power they need, if it were developed instead of wasted. But, those resources "have been devastated almost everywhere in recent years from combinations of coral heatstroke from global warming, new diseases, land-based sewage and fertilizer nutrients, mud from eroded deforested watersheds, global sea level rise, over-fishing, toxic chemicals on land and in the sea, and direct physical damage from destructive fishing, dredging, boats, anchors, tourists, reef harvesting, and increased storm wave intensity."

These nations are the most vulnerable countries of the world to global warming and sea level rise. They need large-scale restoration of degraded reef and coastal habitats to restore their larger fish and shellfish populations, and to save the tourism and in some cases the islands themselves. Experts say the technology exists to do the job, but research and training programs are needed to train people to apply them on the scale needed for sustainable fisheries, tourism, and shore protection. But, it requires major international funding.

(LACK OF) PROGRESS REPORT

"Despite many positive press reports ... that the first major agreement of the Summit was reached to restore depleted fisheries and reduce marine pollution from vessels, the Heads of State failed to make any commitment to the oceans in their Political Declaration."

That's one of the things Ellen Pikitch, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) spokesperson, had to say about the World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2002.

Oceana and WCS awarded the Summit only a 70 percent score in evaluating the progress made at the Summit because of the lack of a strong political declaration to actually implement plans to protect the world's oceans. An Oceana representative commented that there was a "lack of political will and leadership necessary to save the oceans and the circle of life that affects us all."

But, 70 percent is still a "B" and there was agreement on many issues including to:

* Establish an effective and transparent coordination mechanism on ocean and coastal issues within the United Nations;

* Maintain or restore fishing stocks to produce their maximum sustainable yield by 2015;

* Eliminate destructive fishing practices and establish marine protected areas by 2012;

* Develop national and international programs to halt the loss of marine biodiversity, including in coral reefs and wetlands;

* Achieve substantial progress by 2006 to protect the marine environment from landbased activities, including pollution; and,

* Accelerate the development of measures to address invasive alien species in ballast water.

FACT FILE

Canada was among the countries involved in negotiating the Law of the Sea Convention but did not become a party to it until 2003.

Websites

Law of the Sea--http://www. un.org/Depts/los/index.htm

Oceana--http://www. oceana.org/

Ocean Management Research Network--http://www. omrn.ca/