Marine Natural Resources and Technological Development

Marco Colazingari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135196196
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers a comprehensive and systematic examination of the issues involved within Ocean Economics. The oceans are the last frontier on Earth, and research and exploration are key to developing and enhancing global economic activity that is necessary to sustain a growing human population. Colazingari pinpoints the contentious issues relevant to oceans' natural resources management and protection. He examines the cutting edge technology used for the exploration of the oceans' living and non living resources (fisheries, bio-products, energy resources, mineral deposits) and identifies the significant emerging patterns that will determine the development of ocean economics in the future. Problems require timely action by politicians and policymakers at an international level, while scientists and researchers must assist in providing reliable information and investigating viable options.

With writing that is straightforward but comprehensive, this book will appeal to professionals, academics, students, as well as anyone interested in marine environment.

1 The Ocean Realm

Basic Physical Aspects

To have an idea about the magnitude of the problems involved in the analysis of the ocean resources, it is worth recalling the basic physical facts and figures. The world’s oceans cover about 71 percent of the planet’s surface, occupying an area of approximately 362 million km², with an average depth of about 3,800 m and a total volume of 1,370 million km³ of water. Comparing the volumes of oceans and of dry land, the oceans provide 99 percent of the potential living space on Earth. Two-thirds of the oceans are located in the Southern Hemisphere. Given the oceans’ wide dimension, it is necessary to distinguish different scales on which the ocean affects human activities.

On the global scale the oceans play an essential role, performing a number of fundamental ecosystem¹ services. The oceans are not only the ultimate recyclers, but have a crucial function in the carbon cycle, as they are one of the main determinants of the planet’s climate² and sustain the major part of the planet’s biodiversity. It has been assessed (Falkowski et al. 1998) that the oceans absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and release oxygen accounting for about 30–40 percent of the absorption of CO₂ produced worldwide each year.³ Through the photosynthesis process, microscopic plants called phytoplankton⁴ dwelling in oceans’ surface draw approximately 100 billion tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere and release about 45 billion tons of oxygen annually, equal to 50 percent of the oxygen present in the atmosphere.⁵ In brief, without the life-supporting function of the oceans, life on planet Earth simply would not exist.

On a smaller scale, the paramount importance and complexity of the ocean-related issues are evident as well because the natural ecosystems that make life possible on this planet are connected in a dynamic of non-linear processes and interactions at various levels. Non-linearity implies that some or all of the parameters involved in the description of the system are not identical over all magnitudes and regimes of system operations—i.e. parameters change their values with changes in the variables. Given our present scientific knowledge and technological apparatus, this makes the oceanic system very complex, highly indeterminate and definitely unpredictable. Although the oceans’ elements and functions are strictly connected in a complex system, it is still possible to highlight many smaller ecosystems included within. Physical, chemical and biological factors greatly vary throughout the oceans and sometimes combine to make distinct marine ecosystems such as coral reefs, kelp forests and hydrothermal vents.⁶

Another consequence of the world oceans’ complexity is that, when dealing with their governance, it is impossible to neatly separate naturally occurring ecosystem functions from the effects of the many human activities. Coastal management, for instance, is closely connected to ocean governance, since the coastal zone is the land-sea interface. In addition, both ocean and coastal ecosystems are not static but evolve by natural processes—i.e. plate tectonic dynamics, climatic change, erosion and sedimentation etc. Furthermore, every major human marine activity impacts on every other one and the chain of effects and counter-effects is so integrated that it is not possible to deal properly with these activities separately. The straightforward consequence of such interrelations is the global and interdisciplinary approach needed to deal with oceanic problems.

The ocean is a 3D environment, and the physical elements composing it can be distinguished in (A) vertical and (B) horizontal areas, each of which hosts different types of resources and requires increasingly challenging technology the deeper you go in order to explore the habitats and exploit the resources available.

A. Vertical areas include:

1. The surface;

2. The water column, which can be divided into four layers:

a. The upper level, called Epipelagic zone (0–200 m);

b. An upper-intermediate level called Mesopelagic zone (200–1,000 m);

c. A lower-intermediate level called Bathypelagic zone (1,000–4,000 m);

d. A lower level called Abyssopelagic zone (> 4000 m).

Two important specific sub-layers are the Oxygen Minimum Zone (OMZ) and the Carbonate Compensation Depth (CCD). In the OMZ, oxygen content is less than 1 ml/L, with depth of the OMZ layer varying from 100 to 500 m. The CCD is a layer of oxygen maximum, usually located at depths around 4,000 m.

• 3. The seabed, the main global feature of which is the Ocean Ridge System, is the great mountain range lying on the ocean floor that encircles the Earth. This immense submarine volcanic mountain chain, around 60,000 km long and, in places, more than 800 km across, rises an average of about 4,500 m above the sea floor and is the most prominent topographic feature on the surface of our planet.

• 4. The subsoil.

Each layer is important. The upper layer of the water column, especially the Euphotic zone—i.e. the uppermost layer bathed in sunlight where photosynthesis takes place—is relevant because of its high biological activity. This zone, which is the part of the water column that extends from the surface down to the depth where light intensity is reduced to 1 percent of that in the surface (at around 100 m) is the most productive zone in terms of biomass and thus economically significant. Epipelagic and Mesopelagic zones are important for commercial fisheries, and the seabed host mineral deposits and placers. The subsoil is rich in hydrocarbons and hydrates and is therefore particularly relevant from an economic point of view.

A. Horizontal areas include:

1. The open sea;

2. The continental shelf, which is the submerged extended perimeter of each continent;

3. The coastal area, which is the geographic area along the coast;

4. The near-shore, which is the area adjacent to the land.

Regarding the structure of the horizontal dimension, the beach extends from the shore into the ocean on a continental shelf that gradually descends to a sharp drop, called the continental slope. The continental shelf can be as narrow as 20 km or as wide as 400 km. The water on the continental shelf is usually shallow, rarely more than 150–200 m deep. The continental shelf drops off at the continental slope, ending in abyssal plains (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Horizontal and Vertical Scales of the Ocean. Based on Census of Marine Life Research Program (2003)

With reference to the scientific knowledge we posses, although many disciplines interrelate in the study of the ocean, the traditional marine science is usually divided into three main partitions:

1. Physical and chemical Oceanography, which deals with the movements of the water and its chemistry;

2. Biological Oceanography, concerned with all that live in the sea, from the tiny phytoplankton to the blue whale;

3. Marine geology, which is the science of the seabed and subsoil.

These disciplines account for our knowledge and understanding of the dynamics that guide living and non-living marine resources, while marine and ocean engineering provides the technological apparatus to access the water environment in which these resources are discovered, analyzed and exploited. Therefore, the economic analysis of marine natural resources exploitation must rely on information provided by the above-mentioned disciplines.

Economic Relevance of the Ocean Resources

In economics, the environment is usually considered as a complex asset providing a variety of services. Apart from its fundamental life-support system function, the environment provides raw materials and energy, which eventually return to the environment as wastes and services. Within these closed-system relationships, living marine resources have always provided relevant economic support for the life of coastal groups, and ocean-produced energetic and food resources influenced social and economic relationships. However, it is only relatively recently that man started to acquire scientific knowledge and technological capability of how to systematically extract resources from the water environment. This is especially true when it comes to concerns relatively to the deep-sea. The oceans are now a complex intersection of many industrial, national and international interests. According to research on the economics of natural resources (Pearce and Turner 1990), the ocean ecosystem supports three main economic functions:

1. Resource supplier;

2. Waste assimilator;

3. Direct source of utility.

Within this general model, the environment and the economic processes are seen as an input-output relationship. The economic activities decrease or add to the stock of renewable resources, reduce the stock of exhaustible resources and generate waste assimilated by the environment. Maximizing economic exploitation can thus degrade the environment, inhibiting its use for other production purposes, or decreasing its direct utility. Excessive wastes depreciate the asset and when the absorptive capacity is exceeded services are reduced. Although it is inherent to models to simplify reality, this basic circular model does not take into account the numerous inter-relations among the various sub-systems composing the environment, nor their inter-dependencies and synergies, which are fundamental to understanding the complex ocean dynamics. It just provides a general trade-off between economic exploitation and the environment’s health. The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which is an attempt to establish a global inventory of the planet ecosystem, mentions four categories of ecosystem services that provide economic benefits, each of which can be referred to the provision of marine-related products:

1. Regulating—such as protecting shores from storm surges and waves, maintaining water quality and preventing erosion;

2. Providing—both goods, such as fisheries, minerals, hydrocarbons, energy, bio-products and building materials, and services, such as navigational space;

3. Cultural—such as tourism and spiritual appreciation;

4. Supporting—such as cycling of nutrients, fish nursing and habitats.

Looking at the ocean from an economic perspective, the first thing a researcher would do is try to assess its value in monetary terms. However, assessing the monetary value of the oceans is almost impossible, as traditional economic theory does not provide adequate instruments to measure the real economic value of the oceans. Neither does it provide a method by which to quantify changes in value that result from changes in the condition of ecological systems, i.e. the economic cost of the environmental impacts. Trying to calculate the monetary value of the oceans is therefore meaningless, not only because the measure of such a gigantic asset would be quantitatively imprecise, but also because the pricing of the market system does not work for global ecosystems.

In economics, goods are valuable only in comparative terms and since money has no meaning independent of the system in which prices are determined, it makes no sense to ask how much individuals would pay to retain the world’s oceans. The oceans are an essential good, thus meaning a good for which there is no finite compensation for its complete elimination. In giving economic value to the world oceans, it is important to differentiate between: (A) valuations of the ocean ecosystem stock, and (B) estimates of the value of the flow of goods and services from the given stock.

The traditional economic framework is inadequate in valuing holistic concepts such the protection of basic ecosystem functions or biodiversity; however, it can be used to measure the use value of ecosystems. While determining the value of the ocean means assessing its value as a stock, determining the value of its resources as a flow is a different concept. This can be economically assessed as the monetary value added by the harvesting production. In this way, economic valuation can be combined with ecosystem functions and related good and service outputs. Nature’s service flows can be considered as having a functional economic value.

In other words, from an economic perspective nature can be seen as an asset that provides a flow of goods and services to which monetary valuation can be assigned. The units of service flow may be physical assets, such as fish, hydrocarbons, minerals and genetic resources, biogeochemical processes, such as nutrient throughput and water release, and even cultural-social activities, such as recreational use of the beaches and diving or sailing enjoyment. The marginal unit of the service flow can be valued upon the willingness to pay for their provision or willingness to accept compensation for their loss. Monetising marine-related goods and services sold in the marketplace is a straightforward calculation, as one can look at their market price. On the other hand, to determine the economic value of ecological services, complex valuation techniques must be used.

Unfortunately, ecological valuation techniques such as surrogate market values and survey-based methods are quite abstract and theoretical. However, to put it simply, the value of all goods and services provided by the oceans would give the total economic value for the marine ecosystem. The total economic value of environmental resources is usually divided into three main components: Use Value; Option Value; and Non-Use Value (Tietenberg 2006). The Use Value is the value that comes from the direct use, for example the price of the fish harvested or the minerals extracted. The Option Value is the value placed on the possible future use of the same resources. The Non-Use Value is the existence value that natural resources have even if not exploited. It reflects the human willingness to conserve the environment.

Even though putting a monetary value on the oceans is somehow nonsense, there has been a lot of attention on the economic significance of natural systems (Bockstael et al. 1998). Given the desirability of integrating economic and environmental accounts to have a true global assessment, economists tried to develop methods for valuing non-marketed public goods⁷ such as environmental quality, while some ecologists and other natural scientists (Braden and Kolstad 1991; Freeman 1993) have developed their own estimates of the economic value of ecosystem services. Therefore, several methods to estimate natural resources value are available. With direct observation methods, prices are directly observable and calculation possible. When values are not directly observable, surveys to estimate willingness to pay may be used (the so called “contingent valuation”). Alternatively, economists try to infer values through a number of methods such as travel cost value, hedonic property value, hedonic wage value, avoidance expenditure value, etc. (Tietenberg 2006).

Concerning the marine environment, there has been an attempt (Giarini 2004) to value the oceans within the framework of the ‘dowry and patrimony’ theory, which includes every available resource and asset—material and non-material, monetised and non-monetised— using qualitative indicators and the concept of utilization value. From the traditional economic point of view, the valuation methods used in this attempt are too abstract to be considered quantitatively robust. A well-known but criticized attempt to perform an ecosystem valuation can be found in a paper by Costanza and colleagues (2002) which estimates the annual net worth of the biosphere for the year 2000 at a total of USD 38 trillion, with a value of USD 24 trillion from ocean-related services and a v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Ocean Realm
• 2. The Exploration of the Oceans
• 3. Offshore Oil and Gas
• 4. Energy from the Oceans
• 5. Underwater Mineral Deposits and Placers
• 6. Living Resources
• 7. Marine Bioproducts
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index