Taskforce on Ocean Governance

Biodiversity

The oceans are important for many reasons. They cover three quarters of the Earth’s surface, contain 97 per cent of the Earth’s water, and represent 99 per cent of the living space on the planet by volume. Under and over this huge amount of water there is biodiversity. Not only fishes, but invertebrates, seabirds, marine mammals and many others marine living resources. Globally, over three billion people depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods. And it is estimated that about $3-trillion per year or about 5 per cent of global GDP is the market value of marine and coastal resources. There are many governance structures, international agreements, rules and norms aiming to govern this 99 per cent of sea territory that includes provision for biodiversity, such as Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), United Nations Convention Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Regional Seas Agreements and many others, including the Regional Fisheries Management Organizations. Recently, a gap between UNCLOS e CBD was recognized, and triggered a series of meetings and debates over the importance of a legally international agreement under UNCLOS to better enable conservation in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). The conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in ABNJ is increasingly attracting international attention, as scientific information, albeit insufficient, reveals the richness and vulnerability of such biodiversity, particularly in seamounts, hydrothermal vents and cold-water coral reefs, while concerns grow about the increasing anthropogenic pressure posed by existing and emerging activities, such as fishing and bioprospecting, in the deep sea

In this cluster, we hope to reach people from different disciplines, social and/or natural scientists, that with an interdisciplinary approach, who are aiming to discuss governance architectures, power and knowledge influencing decision-making and regime design. We are particularly looking for people who want to challenge the traditional governmental policy making in order to promote and discuss innovative mechanisms for transformations in ocean governance. If you’d like to join the cluster, please click here to become a member. This will allow you to post information on the page and give you the opportunity to receive information and updates via the Oceans Taskforce listserve.

While we do not have funding ourselves, we do hope to foster joint projects via Working Groups, which would bring together cluster members to write grant proposals, put together collected volumes/special issues, or develop webinars, workshops, syllabi, or similar products. All projects should focus on the cluster topic and fit within the ESG Science Plan (http://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/research-agenda/).

Working group members should come from more than one institution and should have sufficient expertise to accomplish project goals. Forming a working group can help you to expand your professional network. It will also provide mentoring from the cluster leaders and access to logistical support like web-conferencing from ESG headquarters. To submit a Working Group proposal, please fill out this form and send it to the cluster leader(s) listed below. If you’d like to propose a Working Group that fits in more than one cluster, please send it to the leaders of each cluster in a single e-mail. Scroll down for descriptions of active Working Groups

 

Cluster Leader:

Leandra Goncalves
University of Campinas, Brazil
goncalvesleandra@gmail.com

Oran Young
University of California – Santa Barbara, USA
oran.young@gmail.com

 

Active Working Groups:

Biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction
Co-Leads: Leandra Gonçalves, Rak Kim and Oran Young

Products: a Cluster of papers in Global Environmental Politics journal

Description: This project began before the taskforce was created. In fact, the project has started at International Studies Annual Conference (Baltimore, 2016) after a panel where basically every researcher was discussing the high-seas governance. Oran Young from the United States and Leandra Goncalves from Brazil have taken the initiative in developing this idea.The emergence of this topic is due to the fact that a major development in ocean governance involves the effort to devise a legally binding Implementing Agreement to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ). This ambitious initiative encompasses a linked set of provisions on marine genetic resources, area based management tools, environmental impact assessment, and technology transfer/capacity development. The UN General Assembly has formed a PrepCom to make a recommendation regarding whether to proceed with the launching of an International Negotiating Committee on this initiative. A fair amount has been written about this subject. But so far, most of the literature comes from the advocacy community and from a legal perspective. What is needed is a balanced or critical assessment of the issues involved from members of the ESG community who think about international institutions/governance systems and who ask questions about processes of regime formation, the design of effective regimes, interaction with other regimes, and so forth. The journal Global Environmental Politics has expressed interest in publishing a cluster of 2-4 articles on this topic.

As part of this development we already approved a panel on the topic for the 2018 Convention of the International Studies Association in San Francisco.

Participants: Oran Young (University of California, Santa Barbara), Leandra Goncalves (Environmental Studies and Research Center (NEPAM) University of Campinas (UNICAMP) Brazil), Elizabeth M. De Santo (Franklin & Marshall College), Elizabeth Mendenhall (Johns Hopkins University); Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir (Bates College); Elizabeth Nyman (Texas A&M University Galveston); Rachel Tiller (SINTEF); Rakhyun Kim (Utrecht University); James Hollway (Graduate Institute, Geneva); DG Webster (Dartmouth College); Pedro Fidelman (University of the Sunshine Coast).

Co-Clusters: Uncertainty, Fisheries and Ocean Law

Closed to new participants.