Sustainable Ocean Governance

A Geographical Perspective

Adalberto Vallega

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134658459
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This topical book examines ocean governance and calls for close co-operation between science and policy. Adalberto Vallega uniquely considers the ocean as a spatial complex system which must be represented as a whole and argues that scientific approaches must change to achieve progress and co-operation between science and policy.

1 Science and policy facing the ocean

Overview of chapter discussion

To understand	Consideration should be centred on
Where the roots of ocean governance may be found	The rise of modern society, in the late eighteenth century
How the principles of ocean governance may be designed	The rise of post-modern society, in the 1970s
How ocean resource exploitation has evolved	The development of modern society, 1760s to 1970s
What targets ocean resource exploitation is being directed towards	The take-off of post-modern society, 1970s to 1990s
What political trigger developments in ocean governance have already been implemented	The UN international conferences from the 1970s to 1990s
What economic factors have arisen	The globalisation process
The influence of physical and ecological factors	The global change process
How culture has influenced policy	The rise of the sustainable development concept
Which ocean sciences have the greatest influence in the twenty-first century	Life, management and engineering sciences
How many fields ocean governance consists of	The global, multi-national, and national scales of governance

1.1 A profound watershed in the role of the ocean

23 April 1838: after an historic race across the Atlantic Ocean, that had begun 15 days earlier in London, the Great Western and the Sirius berthed almost simultaneously in New York. The Great Western and the Sirius were the first steam-propelled iron vessels to sail in Atlantic waters, and their race marked the beginning of modern society in the ocean. In 1996, the first fully cellular vessels leaving North America’s Eastern seaboard and heading for Europe, heralded the start of the so-called ‘Atlantic Battle’ – the fight for control of the deep-sea container routes between the United States and Western Europe. This event marked the beginning of a profound transformation of the modern ocean, accomplished within the space of just a few years, and the subsequent rise of the post-modern ocean.

History after the First Industrial Revolution evolved through a sequence of stages triggered by innovations in technology, economic organisation, social reform and changing behavioural patterns. To highlight this stage-based process, Patrick Geddes (1915) conceived a model based on two stages, palæo-technical and neo-technical, the former typified by the First Industrial Revolution and the latter by the Second Industrial Revolution (end of the nineteenth century). Some years later, Luis Mumford (1934) designed a model that included three stages; neo-technical (before the First Industrial Revolution), palæo-technical (1760–1860) and neo-technical (post-1860). These approaches led to the proposal of a three-stage model, based on palæo-, neo- and post-industrial stages, within which the processes concerned with ocean governance were focused (Vallega 1992b: 46–53; 1992c).

The building of stage-based models is a captivating exercise. According to the theory behind it, different patterns of social evolution and natural resource exploitation may be drawn up. Regardless of the background that may be adopted or approach that may be followed, there is no doubt that the development of modern society, its decline and the rise of post-modern conditions were based on two changing phases, both influencing understanding of the world. The first phase took shape in the 1760s–80s when a wide range of innovations – essentially rooted in steam propulsion systems and the power loom – triggered the birth of the modern, industrial society. The second phase began two centuries later, giving rise to the postmodern era. It was given impetus by a wide range of factors including the rise of a new international division of labour, the growing importance of the environmental question, and the influence of computer science and information technology. This phase began to approach maturity in the early 1990s when the establishment of global information networks opened the globalisation era. The basic roots of the present world organisation may therefore be summarised as in Table 1.1.

This model may be useful for designing holistic views of the evolution of society, focusing on its changing phases and the parallel changing uses of the earth’s ecosystem, but its utility is even more palpable when individual areas of the earth’s ecosystem and the world’s organisation are considered. When applied to the case of the oceans, the distinction of modern and post-modern stages in the world’s evolution makes the ocean’s past role in the development of society more understandable and its possible future role easier to design. For this reason, any discussion about ocean governance requires a brief presentation of the evolving role of the oceans in modern and post-modern society.

Table 1.1 The stage-based model

1.2 Modern society and the challenge of the ocean

The Atlantic Ocean lies at the heart of modern society. The routes linking the British and North Sea ports to the American ones located between the Gulf of Maine and Chesapeake Bay became the umbilical cord of the regions controlling world maritime trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This ocean space played a key economic and political role in determining the rise of strategic thinking and the development of exploitation patterns for the rest of the world’s oceans. The domination of the North Atlantic sea routes by steam-propelled iron vessels led to the exploration of other economically and politically important ocean areas with a view to tracing and exploiting new mercantile routes and to developing new operating strategies. This process was marked by demanding tasks and dramatic events, such as those which occurred during the search for the Northwest passage between the

Figure 1.1 The development of modern and post-modern society.

Atlantic and Pacific. Even more impressive was the design of a useful route network aimed at consolidating the political influence of Great Britain and other colonial Powers in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific area. In that context, the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) should be regarded not only as a technologically impressive enterprise, but also as a successful experiment in the strategic use of the ocean by modern society. This global view of the oceans’ role achieved a significant step forward in 1845, when the Royal Geographical Society in London promoted the development of a nomenclature of oceans and seas. This move was prompted by the necessity to standardise atlases and to create a common baseline for navigation, maritime trade and other sea-orientated businesses. By its nature, that work also served to strengthen the control of Great Britain and other protagonist powers over the oceans and seas.

When modern society began in the nineteenth century, accurate navigation was a major concern for sea-going nations. Navigation charts, whose publication began in 1853, were to be regarded as the sum of knowledge acquired as a result of mercantile endeavour. Compared with other sea uses, oceanographic research showed the best progress during this time. The sea surface was not only investigated for navigation purposes but also per se with the aim of gaining an assessment of the movement of the upper layers of the water column. In 1848 Maury published an extended overview of marine currents. However, the field in which the new attitude towards ocean research was best exemplified was in the investigation of the water column and sea-bed with the objective of assessing the bottom features, and ascertaining the location, kinds and abundance of living resources. Many scientists took soundings in various marine areas, thereby stimulating the need for a systematic investigation of the whole ocean world. This process reached its peak in 1872 when the Challenger sailed on a three-year 70,000- mile voyage, providing an unprecedented amount of data. The Challenger voyage was a celebration of the faith in science and experimental research, which formed the foundation of this powerful new society (Deacon 1973).

Consistent with this background, many new uses of the sea were pioneered with the aid of high technology. Thus, in 1851, the first telegraph cable was laid on the sea-bed between France and England, followed by the laying of a global cable network across both coastal seas and deep-ocean areas. Significantly, with the laying of a cable between Europe and the Unites States in 1865, the ocean environment became a long-distance communication space.

Between the 1870s and the 1910s there were a wide range of factors pushing modern society towards maturity. At that time, one of the principal architects of changing economic organisation and social trend-setting was the United States. The industrial use of oil-propulsion systems, new kinds of manufacturing processes, the employment of electrical energy, the emergence of computing machines, aircraft and cars were only part of an unprecedented succession of discoveries and innovations which were transforming the division of labour in factories, the structure of society, and the international economy. These led, in turn, to new patterns of spatial organisation that continued to evolve and spread until the 1970s.

While new uses for the oceans were being designed and developed (Couper 1992), navigation, the oldest use, continued to characterise the mature modern society, whilst giving shape to three critical processes. The first process was the evolution in ships’ functions. In 1872 the first steam-propelled bulk liquid vessel, the Vaderland, carrying oil, was built in Great Britain. To some extent that event may be regarded as the initial step in the specialisation of vessels for solid and bulk liquid, which was one of the main effects of industrial growth in the developed world. The second process was the evolution in propulsion systems. In 1884 the first steam-turbine engine was built and in 1919 the first diesel-propelled tanker, the Vulcanus, was launched. The third process, submarine navigation, played a key role in generating enthusiasm in the technological power of modern society. The first submersible vessel was launched in 1906, unfortunately giving rise to many generations of navy prototypes before submarine navigation finally found a peaceful purpose.

Further significant milestones in the innovation of maritime transportation techniques and organisation were a long time in coming, and it was not until the late 1950s and 1960s that initial developments in container-based cargo handling and transportation systems began to materialise. These innovations were matched by the search for increasingly large vessels, both in cellular and in bulk transportation. Over the period of the 1950s–70s, the propensity to employ large vessels in container transportation was marked by the building of successive generations of vessels with increasing dead-weight tonnage. Third-generation vessels, launched in the early 1970s, consisted of full container ships capable of accommodating 3,000 TEUs (Twenty Equivalent Units, namely, 20 foot long containers). The most impressive examples of this trend towards gigantism in bulk vessels were those engaged in oil transportation. The first step occurred in 1957 with the launch of the Universe Apollo which exceeded the threshold of 100,000 dead-weight tons (dwt). The process reached a peak in 1976–7 when the Batillus (550,000 dwt) and Pierre Guillaumat (554,000 dwt) were launched. At that time deep-sea routes, such as those linking Australia and Japan, were routinely plied by 200,000 dwt solid bulk vessels. Meanwhile the employment of satellite positioning systems opened the way for new navigation techniques and to the adoption of new tools for safeguarding life at sea.

Whilst navigation, and mercantile transportation in particular, were benefiting from unprecedented progress, patterns of exploitation of the marine environment were continuing apace in other areas. The breadth and scale of sea uses occurring during the maturity of modern society were well illustrated in 1983 when The Times Atlas of the Oceans presented the ‘Global Marine Interaction Model’ (GMIM), a matrix reflecting the state of ocean exploitation in the 1970s (The Times, Couper ed.: 208). About twenty main categories of use were given, each of these incorporating a multitude of lesser uses. The design and operation of new types of ocean use benefited from a wide variety of important technical innovations. The following are worth mentioning.

Telephone cables In 1956 the first transatlantic telephone cable was laid, sparking off a wave of activity that led to the laying of an extended web of cables in the following two decades. The use of satellite systems for telephone calls has not diminished the importance of cables since they have become important tools for the transmission of documents (facsimile system) and data (computer networks).

Pipelines and mineral exploitation Since the 1950s sea-beds have been crossed by numerous pipelines. Over the period of the 1950s–70s oil and gas pipelines spread throughout coastal seas whilst successful experiments were undertaken to exploit deeper ocean bottoms. Meanwhile, water pipelines became a key ocean use, supplying islands and archipelagic communities. In the 1970s the discovery of manganese nodules at 4,000–6,000 m depths, and the successful experimental use of technologies for producing energy from the ocean, led to the belief that deep-ocean mining was about to become a reality (Kent 1980). Ultimately, economic and environmental drawbacks discouraged developments in this direction.

Living resources In the third quarter of the twentieth century modern society, with the aid of improved technology and organisation, has become effective at exploiting the living resources of the world’s oceans. There are at least two reasons for this. Firstly, fisheries management, by careful choice of target species and use of catch quotas, has evolved towards the sustainable use of resources meeting the day-to-day demand without jeopardising the integrity of the underlying trophic webs. Secondly, aquaculture has progressed to the point of enabling the creation of artificial food chains with the final result of creating man-made ecosystems.

Plate tectonics theory One of modern society’s most important scientific achievements may be found in the formulation of the first global theory on the birth and evolution of the ocean, and its role in the earth’s system. This occurred in two steps. Firstly, the theory of continental drift was conceived by Alfred Wegener (1912), thereby establishing a connection between the dynamics of the ocean bottom and continental masses. Secondly, the theory of plate tectonics was formulated during the 1960s, and provided the first global view of processes invo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• 1. Science and Policy Facing the Ocean
• 2. The Ocean Ecosystem: The Abiotic Component
• 3. The Ocean Ecosystem As the Focus of Governance
• 4. Legal and Jurisdictional Frameworks
• 5. The Role of Ocean Resources
• 6. Coastal Management: The Evolving Approach
• 7. Sustainable Development In Coastal Areas
• 8. Integrated Coastal Management Programmes
• 9. The Regional Scale of Ocean Management
• 10. The Ocean from a Global Perspective
• 11. Conclusions
• References and Further Reading