Oceans and Estuaries: The Ocean Commissions' Unfulfilled Vision

AuthorRobin Kundis Craig
Pages221-237
Chapter 15
Oceans and Estuaries: The Ocean
Commissions’ Unfulfilled Vision
Robin Kundis Craig
Agenda 21, the action plan of the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development, addresses the myriad ways that hu-
man activity affects the global environment. Chapter 17 of the plan
specifically focuses on sustainable development of oceans and estuar-
ies. It outlines seven program areas for marine resources: integrated
management and sustainable development of coastal areas, marine
environmental protection, marine living resources of the high seas,
marine living resources under national jurisdiction, climate change,
international cooperation, and the particular concerns of small nation
states.1In the years preceding the 1992 Rio Conference, the United
States was a world leader in addressing the first four of these programs
and international cooperation.
Since 2002, however, the complexity of U.S. ocean regulation has
prompted two ocean commissions to recommend substantial changes
to U.S. law to better pursue an integrated, ecosystem-based, sustain-
able policy for its marine resources. Moreover, the United States has
lagged behind the rest of the world in addressing global climate
change, an issue that has now become critical to the sustainable use of
ocean and coastal resources.
This chapter provides a brief review of the importance of the
oceans, the general goals of Chapter 17, and U.S. progress in meeting
those goals. It emphasizes the 2003 report of the Pew Ocean Commis-
sion and its recommendations for the U.S. living marine resources, the
U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy’s more expansive 2004 report and
recommendations, and recent discoveries regarding the threats that
climate change and ocean acidification from increasing carbon diox-
ide concentrations pose to ocean sustainability.
Oceans, Agenda 21, and Sustainable Development
Oceans cover more than 70 percent of our planet,2support immense
reserves of biodiversity (in all senses),3produce at least half of Earth’s
221
atmospheric oxygen,4drive the planet’s hydrological cycle,5seques-
ter carbon dioxide,6and play a significant role in Earth’s climate and
weather.7As such, oceans and estuaries are critical providers of eco-
system services—the “myriad...life support functions, the observ-
able manifestations of ecosystem processes that ecosystems provide
and without which human civilizations could not thrive ....
8A
comprehensive study that appeared in Nature in 1997 reported that
“[a]bout 63% of the estimated value [of the world’s ecosystem ser-
vices] is contributed by marine ecosystems,” especially coastal
ecosystems.9Specifically, “[c]oastal environments, including es-
tuaries, coastal wetlands, beds of sea grass and algae, coral reefs,
and continental shelves...cover only 6.3% of the world’s surface,
but are responsible for 43% of the estimated value of the world’s
ecosystem services.”10
Small wonder, then, that Chapter 17 of Agenda 21 recognizes that
“[t]he marine environment—including the oceans and all seas and ad-
jacent coastal areas—forms an integrated whole that is an essential
component of the global life-support system and a positive asset that
presents opportunities for sustainable development.”11 The overall
goal of Chapter 17 is to develop “new approaches to marine and
coastal areas management and development, at the national, subre-
gional, regional, and global levels...that are integrated in content
and are precautionary and anticipatory in ambit ....
12
Chapter 17’s integrated approach requires a management system
that identifies and protects marine ecosystems and the services that
they provide or should be providing, as opposed to just regulating the
taking of specific goods. Specifically:
Sustainable use of the oceans requires that all activities, individu-
ally and collectively, both coastal and deepwater, preserve water
quality sufficient to support the biological, chemical, and physical
processes of the ocean without stress, so that oceans can support a
variety of healthy ecosystems; nurture the plankton (small, some-
times microscopic, plants and animals that drift near the surface of
oceans) that generate much of the earth’s atmospheric oxygen and
form the basis of all ocean food chains; deter outbreaks of patho-
gens and other harmful organisms; dissolve excess CO2from the at-
mosphere; and circulate in currents that aid human navigation, drive
relatively predictable weather patterns, and cycle heat and nutrients
throughout the depths and around the world. Sustainable develop-
ment further requires that humans remove only the amount of bio-
222 AGENDA FOR A SUSTAINABLE AMERICA

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