FOURTH ANNUAL ROGER REVELLE LECTURE | Beyond the Freedom of the Seas: Ocean Policy for the Third Millennium

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Author

Michael Orbach | Duke University Marine Lab, Beaufort, North Carolina, USA

Introduction

I had the great fortune to know and to work with Roger Revelle. I did not work with him on science, but rather on issues of the relationship between science and policy-making, and on the educational process through which ocean professionals of the future should be trained. For all of his grounding in natural science, Roger was a "big thinker" in many areas including those I mention. In this lecture, I will build on Roger's ideas and, with a great deal of humility, point to what I perceive to be the their boundedness in the time Roger lived and worked.

My general thesis in this talk is that it is time to "enclose" the world ocean. I use the term "ocean" in the singular to emphasize the connectedness of all of the world's major saltwater bodies, with each other and with the land and the atmosphere as well. The term "enclose" is taken from the ocean policy literature, and refers generally to the trend towards the treatment of more and more of the ocean and its resources as sovereign resources, within the ownership or control of one or a group of nations, or even specific private interests. In the most general sense, to "enclose" the ocean is to exert control over access and use rights and privileges throughout the world ocean, in particular what is now referred to as the "high seas," the area more than 200 nautical miles from shore. Such enclosure must necessarily include changes in our cultural perceptions of appropriate behavior toward ocean space and resources in all parts of the world ocean, including such concepts as the "precautionary principle"' and our perception of ocean resources along the commerce-recreation-aesthetics continuum. This thesis is, of course, controversial. I will argue that throughout human history we have progressed from lower to higher densities of human use of terrestrial, ocean, and atmospheric space, and as density of use has increased, governance institutions have been developed to control human behavior toward various ends, ends based on human perceptions and values. Most terrestrial space and resources, for example, were in the past "open access, common pool," owned by no one and used by all (Ostrom, 1990; McCay and Acheson, 1987). As densities of use increased, governance institutions—including restricted access and private property rights—developed to create order in that use, and to channel its costs and benefits (McCay, 1998; Coastal States Organization, 1990). Such incursions to the "open access, common pool" notion are now occurring in the ocean, and in the atmosphere, creating significant changes in what McCay has termed the "culture of the commons'—the human beliefs, values, and preferences that determine the nature of our governance institutions (McCay, 1998). It is this history and progression I will characterize, with a prognosis for ocean space and resources in particular.

In doing so, I am clearly expressing my own thoughts and opinions as well as "scientific" facts and information. That, of course, is the nature of governance institutions. Science is but one input to the process of governance, which at its core is an exercise in the development and application of human values. It is our human values regarding the world ocean to which I now turn.

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Full Article

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Citation

Orbach, M. 2003. Fourth Annual Roger Revelle Lecture—Beyond the freedom of the seas: Ocean policy for the third millennium. Oceanography 16(1):20–29, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2003.55.

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