2015 Conference

Full Presentation Panel

Ocean Acidification and Potential International Legal Responses

Dr. Wil Burns, Ph.D.

While most of the focus in the past thirty years in terms of burgeoning levels of carbon dioxide emissions has been on the potential impacts on climate, an equally foreboding threat is posed by declining pH caused by the uptake of the world's oceans of approximately 30% of this carbon, a phenomenon known as "ocean acidification." Ocean acidification may undermine the ability of calcifying species that form critical components of ocean ecosystems to form shells in the future, including coral polyps, coccolithophores, and pteropods. Moreover, acidification could effect profound and negative behavioral changes in many ocean species. This presentation will seek to assess the potential ramifications of ocean acidification in this century and beyond, critical research gaps, and potential international legal responses under regimes such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and regional ocean pollution treaties.

Enhancing Cross Border Conservation: the Conservation of Sedentary Species on the Continental Shelf and the Deep Sea Bed.

Prof Simone Borg, PH.D., M.Jur, LL.D.

Our research proposal focuses on portraying the difficulties in ensuring the conservation of a separate group of living marine resources referred to under UNCLOS as “sedentary species” that may occur on the continental shelf and the deep sea bed. There is a distinction in the regulation of such species under Internatioanl law due to the human made borders between areas or national and areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). The regulation of such species in marine ABNJ areas is completely omitted under the 1982 Convention. There is no mention of sedentary species under the UNCLOS high seas regime or in Part XI relating to the deep sea bed. They are considered as an integral part of the resources of the continental shelf when they occur in marine areas subject to national jurisdiction and are specifically excluded from the EEZ regime. Furthermore, UNCLOS does not refer to the many conservation duties the coastal state may have in their regard under the continental shelf regime, as the focus of this Part of UNCLOS was formulated with the intention of regulating mining and extraction of non-living resources. The UNCLOS provisions leave gaps in international law that have not been addressed by other legal instruments. Due to the absence of regulation, there are uncertainties surrounding jurisdictional claims over sedentary species on the deep seabed, which are seriously jeopardizing their conservation. Awareness about the commercial and conservation importance of sedentary species in high seas areas when UNCLOS was negotiated was certainly not the same as it is today. Nor was it technologically feasible and commercially viable to exploit such species at that time. Consequently, as International law lagged behind developments in the field of bioprospecting on the deep seabed, the international community was left to face a legal dilemma as to whether bioprospecting should be classified as a harvesting activity, an extracting activity or even as marine scientific research (MSR). In other words identifying under which legal boundary bioprospecting falls has been impossible and consequently it remains an unregulated activity. Wev propose the formulation of an Implementation Agreement to UNCLOS specifically designed to address the conservation of sedentary species on the seabed when occurring both within and outside national jursdiction. Our proposal emulates  two existing Implementation Agreements under UNCLOS, namely The Deep Sea Mining Agreement and the Fish Stocks Agreement, which have both served to trouble-shoot the deadlock concerning Part IX of the 1982 Convention and the conflicting interpretations of sub-section two of Parts VII, respectively. They were a successful compromise to a political deadlock that dragged on for entire decades. The conclusion of Implementation Agreements avoided reopening discussions over the provisions of UNCLOS and instead supplemented them further in accordance with prevailing state practice. Consequently, our proposal could serve as a model for States to by-pass conflicting and polarized positions and instead focus on regulating current operators in a manner which safeguards one of the most vulnerableand least known components of biodiversity on the planet whilst ensuring a compatible conservation regime across human drawn borders and limits.

Is U.S. Marine Mammal Conservation a Wicked Problem?

Richard L. Wallace

All marine mammals in the U.S. are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (MMPA). The MMPA is a groundbreaking law: in addition to serving as the basis of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, it provided the first—and to date, only—statutory ecological mandate for the protection of wild living resources. It also expanded the scope of values associated with wildlife and created an oversight and appraisal structure unique in U.S. environmental law. Since the act’s passage, marine mammals have gained precedence in public awareness, spawning effective advocacy communities and a broad societal mandate for their protection. However, as Reynolds et al. (2009) and others have noted, the MMPA remains hamstrung by the limitations of the institutions, agencies, and individuals responsible for its implementation, including human arrogance, a false confidence in the power of science as a rationale for conservation, the influence of diverse and often conflicting values on the processes and outcomes of conservation decision making, and the tendency of decision makers to focus on proximate rather than ultimate causes of conservation problems. In this presentation, I will discuss how these limitations demonstrate the existence of the “wicked problems” complex (Rittel and Webber, 1973) in marine mammal conservation: it is normative, difficult to define, multi-causal, dynamic and unstable, and lacking well-defined termination (other than extinction). As well, conservation strategies often create unanticipated problems, contain little room for trial and error, and are predisposed to policy failure. I contend that, as with other complex social problems that environmental professionals face, the wicked problem of marine mammal conservation argues for large-scale paradigmatic change to successfully achieve conservation goals—change that is difficult (at best) and anathema (at worst) to the responsible individuals and agencies. 

Early warning of regime shifts in ecological systems

Dr. Tarsha Eason

The broad implications of catastrophic regime shifts have prompted the need to find methods that are not only able to detect regime shifts but also provide warning of them before they occur.  Variance, skewness, kurtosis, and critical slowing down have all been proposed as indicators of impending regime shifts. However, these approaches typically do not signal a shift until it is well underway which is often too late for management intervention. Further, they have primarily been used to evaluate model or simple systems characterized by few variables. Accordingly, additional work is needed to determine whether these methods will provide distinct signals when assessing real, complex multivariate systems.  In this work, we present an information theory based approach of assessing dynamic changes in system condition. The utility of this method is evaluated by comparing it's performance to traditional indicators through the assessment of model and real systems.  Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in providing warning of critical transitions and therefore may facilitate the development of better methods for detecting and managing systems that are of importance to humans. This work offers great promise for resilience science and sustainability.