Speech to US-European Sustainable Ocean Summit
June 4th, 2013
Cascais, Portugal
I am not a scientist, so I don’t propose to tell you today what you already know – that despite some positive moves, the deterioration of the global ocean, near shore, coastal and high seas, is dangerous and accelerating. Instead I want to focus on why I am here; what the Global Ocean Commission is, and is doing, and is not doing; what our emerging theses are; and how we can work together.
My interest in oceans is three-fold. As a policy-maker I created the world’s largest no-take ocean reserve at Chagos in the British Indian Ocean Territory. I was able to find an outlet for my passion for the environment through the unexpected residual powers of the British Empire. Yet I was shocked to find how little headway had been made around the world. The ocean is 75% of the Earth’s surface, the high seas 45%.The Chagos Reserve, at 640,000 square kilometers, makes up about one third of the total area of ocean that is fully protected as marine reserves in the world today. That total area consists of less than 1% of the total ocean area of the planet. With honourable exceptions, most recently the Australian government with the zoning of its entire Exclusive Economic Zone and John Kerry for identifying the challenges facing the global ocean as a priority, the issues of the global ocean do not command international political attention.
As Foreign Secretary I saw the difficulties of global governance, and the weakness of the multilateral system. The oceans are a prime example of this.The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set a benchmark for ocean governance, but in the high seas its spirit is honoured more in breach than observance, as technological and economic change has outstripped the institutional mechanisms for protecting the common weal.
My next job is President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee in New York, starting in September. This organisation helps the victims of civil conflict around the world. We all know, thanks to Paul Collier, that the bottom billion people in the world existin a complex range of circumstances, including in middle income countries. But for many of them, their primary nutrient is fish. So the future of the oceans is the next frontier in development policy.
The founding idea of the Commission is that the gap between ocean expertise and political clout needs to be bridged. We are not going to add to the scientific knowledge about the oceans. But we can try to turn the increasing evidence of ocean degradation into a political issue higher up the global agenda.
None of us are experts in ocean science and economics, but our secretariat and extended network of experts are. We are focused on the high seas; we recognise the interdependence of high seas to EEZs, but our interest is in the high seas because it is a recognised part of the commonwealth of all nations and requires multilateral engagement. In addition, while we have organised the way we think about the ocean according to lines on maps, marine life knows no borders and we need to consider the value of the high seas to country waters and vice versa.
The formal mandate of the Commission is overfishing, habitat and biodiversity protection, monitoring and compliance, and governance, but this also touches on larger issues such as food security, national security, global resilience and human rights. Few of us are still serving in government, but many of us have national and multilateral experience including Paul Martin, Pascal Lamy and Sri Mulyani Indrawati. We have reached out to business in the emerging economies, to people such as Ratan Tata, because we know there is a massive North/South and East/West equity issue underpinning the debate about the future of the commons.
We have just started our work, with one meeting in Cape Town, and we will finish within a year. We have set ourselves three goals. Firstly, to sound the alarm about the state of the oceans; I don’t need to do that here. Secondly, to develop practical ideas for how to reverse the degradation; I am going to say something about that. And thirdly, to build a coalition for change; I hope that you will be part of that.
Our founding analysis of the problem is not difficult to state: the rules and incentives for exploitation of the high seas are – in the main – too weak to serve the interests of current or future generations. Let me unpack that a bit:
“Rules”. We are concerned that key rules on fishing are set on the high seas by governments acting through Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs), but they only bind those countries that are members of these bodies. They are focused on fishing for specific high value species, not the overall resource, and marked by resource allocation decisions rather than conservation imperatives. Decisions are largely taken by consensus, which means that when they are made, they often reflect the lowest common denominator approach. Since the rules don’t apply to any countries that are not members of RFMOs, the result is that illegal and unregulated fishing is rife, as policing is almost non-existent.
“Incentives”. We are concerned that the economic incentives, for example through subsidies, are actually stacked for exploitation of high sea resources, not conservation. And the refusal to address issues like bottom trawling are crippling to the ecosystem.
“In the main”. It is important not to knock everything. For example, there is some evidence that the new EU fisheries policy is a step forward in science-led policy making. The International Seabed Authority does have comprehensive rules in place for regulating seabed mining. However, the seabed legally has been separated from the water column, which to me is a good example of how high seas governance is disjointed and patchy.
“Current generations”. It is sometimes thought that resource efficiency is a long term issue. In fact it is a short term issue, for current generations. We in the Commission are doing the maths, but the up-front cost of overfishing on the high seas is currently many tens of billions of dollars per year. So we know that overfishing is economically dangerous today.
And “Future generations”. The Commissionis not addressing the climate change threat head-on. But we do believe it is real and present and dangerous for the ocean. Warming is not just driving fish stocks to new grounds; it is also shifting currents and changing the acidity of the ocean at an unprecedented rate. And the issues the Commissionis addressing are crucial if we are to build ocean resilience to climate change, restock waters and try to restore marine life so that in adapting to climate change, we are mitigating its impacts on this essential life support system and the people who depend on it.
So the three strands of the Global Ocean Commission’swork are economic, environmental and governmental. We see the nexus of all three as absolutely key. And although it is too early for us to come to conclusions, we are asking some suggestive questions:
The Port State Measures Agreement has an important mandate: once ratified, it will be the first internationally binding agreement that establishes the duty of port states to inspect fishing vessels and to deny entry to those operating illegally. Yet while it was finalised in late 2009, it has not been ratified by enough countries to come into force. Why?
Aeroplanes in the sky are required to carry identification tags and tracking devices, and we know where they are. So it is for commercial maritime shipping vessels. But there is no such requirement for industrial and large fishing vessels, even though some of them have been acknowledged by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime as being involved in drugs and weapons smuggling, and human rights abuses. Why?
We are living in an age of austerity, but fishing subsidies are being used to undercut the livelihoods of fishermen. Why?
These are not easy wins. There will be strong vested interests opposing any change. But if people knew what was going on, they would demand change.
Our aim is to formulate a series of short-, medium- and long-term proposals that bring together a range of interests while challenging others. We cannot afford to let the best to be the enemy of the good, and we do not have the luxury of starting from scratch. We will be looking for practical and costed ideas to make change.
The Commissionis explicitly seeking to be additive to the work of others, many of them in this room. But we are also seeking to catch the tide, as well as make it. 2014 seems to us a year of key decisions for the global ocean. The UN has made September 2015 (the end of the 2014 General Assembly session) a key target date for a decision on whether to begin negotiations that were called for inthe Rio+20 process, to negotiate a new international agreement on the conservation of marine living resources on the high seas. Either there will be a moment of reckoning and decision, or this vital agenda will get lost, as the worlds of ocean science and international politics drift further apart, the problems get worse, the challenge of collective action more complex, the sunk costs bigger, and the clash of short-term versus long-term more difficult. Or we make a change, and show that we understand our own interests as well as the planet’s.
June 4th, 2013
Cascais, Portugal
I am not a scientist, so I don’t propose to tell you today what you already know – that despite some positive moves, the deterioration of the global ocean, near shore, coastal and high seas, is dangerous and accelerating. Instead I want to focus on why I am here; what the Global Ocean Commission is, and is doing, and is not doing; what our emerging theses are; and how we can work together.
My interest in oceans is three-fold. As a policy-maker I created the world’s largest no-take ocean reserve at Chagos in the British Indian Ocean Territory. I was able to find an outlet for my passion for the environment through the unexpected residual powers of the British Empire. Yet I was shocked to find how little headway had been made around the world. The ocean is 75% of the Earth’s surface, the high seas 45%.The Chagos Reserve, at 640,000 square kilometers, makes up about one third of the total area of ocean that is fully protected as marine reserves in the world today. That total area consists of less than 1% of the total ocean area of the planet. With honourable exceptions, most recently the Australian government with the zoning of its entire Exclusive Economic Zone and John Kerry for identifying the challenges facing the global ocean as a priority, the issues of the global ocean do not command international political attention.
As Foreign Secretary I saw the difficulties of global governance, and the weakness of the multilateral system. The oceans are a prime example of this.The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set a benchmark for ocean governance, but in the high seas its spirit is honoured more in breach than observance, as technological and economic change has outstripped the institutional mechanisms for protecting the common weal.
My next job is President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee in New York, starting in September. This organisation helps the victims of civil conflict around the world. We all know, thanks to Paul Collier, that the bottom billion people in the world existin a complex range of circumstances, including in middle income countries. But for many of them, their primary nutrient is fish. So the future of the oceans is the next frontier in development policy.
The founding idea of the Commission is that the gap between ocean expertise and political clout needs to be bridged. We are not going to add to the scientific knowledge about the oceans. But we can try to turn the increasing evidence of ocean degradation into a political issue higher up the global agenda.
None of us are experts in ocean science and economics, but our secretariat and extended network of experts are. We are focused on the high seas; we recognise the interdependence of high seas to EEZs, but our interest is in the high seas because it is a recognised part of the commonwealth of all nations and requires multilateral engagement. In addition, while we have organised the way we think about the ocean according to lines on maps, marine life knows no borders and we need to consider the value of the high seas to country waters and vice versa.
The formal mandate of the Commission is overfishing, habitat and biodiversity protection, monitoring and compliance, and governance, but this also touches on larger issues such as food security, national security, global resilience and human rights. Few of us are still serving in government, but many of us have national and multilateral experience including Paul Martin, Pascal Lamy and Sri Mulyani Indrawati. We have reached out to business in the emerging economies, to people such as Ratan Tata, because we know there is a massive North/South and East/West equity issue underpinning the debate about the future of the commons.
We have just started our work, with one meeting in Cape Town, and we will finish within a year. We have set ourselves three goals. Firstly, to sound the alarm about the state of the oceans; I don’t need to do that here. Secondly, to develop practical ideas for how to reverse the degradation; I am going to say something about that. And thirdly, to build a coalition for change; I hope that you will be part of that.
Our founding analysis of the problem is not difficult to state: the rules and incentives for exploitation of the high seas are – in the main – too weak to serve the interests of current or future generations. Let me unpack that a bit:
“Rules”. We are concerned that key rules on fishing are set on the high seas by governments acting through Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs), but they only bind those countries that are members of these bodies. They are focused on fishing for specific high value species, not the overall resource, and marked by resource allocation decisions rather than conservation imperatives. Decisions are largely taken by consensus, which means that when they are made, they often reflect the lowest common denominator approach. Since the rules don’t apply to any countries that are not members of RFMOs, the result is that illegal and unregulated fishing is rife, as policing is almost non-existent.
“Incentives”. We are concerned that the economic incentives, for example through subsidies, are actually stacked for exploitation of high sea resources, not conservation. And the refusal to address issues like bottom trawling are crippling to the ecosystem.
“In the main”. It is important not to knock everything. For example, there is some evidence that the new EU fisheries policy is a step forward in science-led policy making. The International Seabed Authority does have comprehensive rules in place for regulating seabed mining. However, the seabed legally has been separated from the water column, which to me is a good example of how high seas governance is disjointed and patchy.
“Current generations”. It is sometimes thought that resource efficiency is a long term issue. In fact it is a short term issue, for current generations. We in the Commission are doing the maths, but the up-front cost of overfishing on the high seas is currently many tens of billions of dollars per year. So we know that overfishing is economically dangerous today.
And “Future generations”. The Commissionis not addressing the climate change threat head-on. But we do believe it is real and present and dangerous for the ocean. Warming is not just driving fish stocks to new grounds; it is also shifting currents and changing the acidity of the ocean at an unprecedented rate. And the issues the Commissionis addressing are crucial if we are to build ocean resilience to climate change, restock waters and try to restore marine life so that in adapting to climate change, we are mitigating its impacts on this essential life support system and the people who depend on it.
So the three strands of the Global Ocean Commission’swork are economic, environmental and governmental. We see the nexus of all three as absolutely key. And although it is too early for us to come to conclusions, we are asking some suggestive questions:
The Port State Measures Agreement has an important mandate: once ratified, it will be the first internationally binding agreement that establishes the duty of port states to inspect fishing vessels and to deny entry to those operating illegally. Yet while it was finalised in late 2009, it has not been ratified by enough countries to come into force. Why?
Aeroplanes in the sky are required to carry identification tags and tracking devices, and we know where they are. So it is for commercial maritime shipping vessels. But there is no such requirement for industrial and large fishing vessels, even though some of them have been acknowledged by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime as being involved in drugs and weapons smuggling, and human rights abuses. Why?
We are living in an age of austerity, but fishing subsidies are being used to undercut the livelihoods of fishermen. Why?
These are not easy wins. There will be strong vested interests opposing any change. But if people knew what was going on, they would demand change.
Our aim is to formulate a series of short-, medium- and long-term proposals that bring together a range of interests while challenging others. We cannot afford to let the best to be the enemy of the good, and we do not have the luxury of starting from scratch. We will be looking for practical and costed ideas to make change.
The Commissionis explicitly seeking to be additive to the work of others, many of them in this room. But we are also seeking to catch the tide, as well as make it. 2014 seems to us a year of key decisions for the global ocean. The UN has made September 2015 (the end of the 2014 General Assembly session) a key target date for a decision on whether to begin negotiations that were called for inthe Rio+20 process, to negotiate a new international agreement on the conservation of marine living resources on the high seas. Either there will be a moment of reckoning and decision, or this vital agenda will get lost, as the worlds of ocean science and international politics drift further apart, the problems get worse, the challenge of collective action more complex, the sunk costs bigger, and the clash of short-term versus long-term more difficult. Or we make a change, and show that we understand our own interests as well as the planet’s.
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