Conservation of the marine environment and the exploitation of the seabed : the ocean, climate change and marine biodiversity of the benthic zone : joining the dots

Abstract

The application of an integrated approach is widely acknowledged as an essential aspect of any policy and legal regime for the conservation of natural resources. The intricate relationship between living marine resources, climate and the ocean has been repeatedly stressed at the scientific and even at the political level. The concept of the «planetary boundaries» has highlighted the inextricable relationship via which the planet «regulates itself» as one holistic ecosystem. In practice, however, it remains somewhat confined to science and political rhetoric. Under international law, climate change, the ocean and marine biodiversity continue to be regulated distinctly from one another. Notwithstanding the international community’s renewed focus in recent years to regulate more ambitiously and effectively climate change as well as ocean governance, including the conservation of marine biodiversity and habitats, international norm-making continues to evolve in «silos». The presentation highlights the urgent need for international law to adopt an effective integrated approach in regulating one aspect of ocean governance namely, the sustainable use of the living resources of the seabed, threatened by the negative impacts of climate change. Climate change is a threat multiplier of current problems relating to the seabed (e. g., coral bleaching) as well as the cause of new risks (e. g., breakdown of methane hydrates) to the ocean and its resources. The paper will first examine applicable international law sources in search of applicable multilateral norms and whether they are fit for purpose in protecting the ocean from the risks of climate change. The paper aims to demonstrate that while the multitude of existing international norms, if well implemented, would greatly enhance the health of the oceans and its resources, «innovative» substantive and procedural norms may ensure better resilience and preparedness to adapt ocean governance to the effects of climate change. Lack of action in this direction would jeopardize sustainable ocean governance according to the rule of law. Using the Conference theme on the conservation of the marine environment and the exploitation of the seabed, the paper in its conclusion will suggest possible legal techniques that would dovetail the application of International legal principles/norms with mitigation and adaptation measures required to harness and where possible prevent oceanic geophysical, chemical and biological changes that climate change may cause and the effects which these changes have upon humanity and biodiversity. The inclusion of these norms into the Implementation Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, currently under negotiation, or a new legal instrument altogether, may serve to generate, a new multilateral legal instrument that effectively integrates the regulation of seabed as a habitat of marine biodiversity and climate change