Who owns the oceans & their hidden treasures?

World’s final frontier

LONDON, Dec 4, (RTRS): Ransom-hungry pirates, polar explorers, offshore oil giants – the race for the riches of the world’s final frontier is on.

From Thailand to Alaska, the battle to tap everdwindling resources from minerals to fish is spurring new conflicts over who has the right to the treasures of the deep seas.

As India, China and Brazil seek new sources of cobalt, copper and nickel to build the gadgets demanded by their booming populations, they are preparing to mine a new realm – the dark depths of the ocean.

Over the next decade India will spend more than $1 billion to develop and test deep-sea technologies – including human-piloted exploration submarines – in the Indian Ocean that could give access to once inaccessible mineral riches up to 6.8 miles (11 km) under water.

“We have to depend on ocean resources sooner or later ... there is no other way,” said Gidugu Ananda Ramadass, head of India’s deep-sea mining project at the National Institute of Ocean Technology in the southern city of Chennai.

But mining the seas – home to the vast majority of life on Earth – carries huge risks and could cause irreversible damage to the environment, campaigners warn.

Oceans – which scientists say are less understood than the moon or Mars – cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, yet less than 20 percent of their seafloor has been mapped or observed, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

And what lies below the waves is worth trillions of dollars.

Waughray

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The so-called “blue economy” of marine resources is expected to contribute $3 trillion to the world’s GDP by 2030 – equivalent to the size of the UK economy – up from $1.5 trillion in 2010, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

But from over-fishing, to a rush to mine deep seas, to slavery on fishing boats, the world’s oceans are a source of growing dispute, not least over who should get access to them.

Experts say oceans are a neglected area of global governance despite the United Nations’ 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 193 member states agreeing in 2015 to a global goal to sustainably manage and protect marine resources.

“Oceans’ governance is the classic public good challenge,” said Dominic Waughray, head of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Global Public Goods.

Smart rules are essential to keep oceans healthy – but because nobody owns them, “we have a real problem”, he said.

Liz Karan, senior manager for the high seas at Pew Charitable Trusts, a non-profit organization, said existing regulations were patchy and had struggled to protect ecosystems in international waters.

But a proposed UN treaty to protect ocean biodiversity – and prevent over-exploitation – could change that.

Negotiations on a legally binding treaty – which would cover the high seas, or ocean areas that extend beyond national boundaries capped at 200 nautical miles from coasts – began in September and aim to reach an agreement by 2020.

But government and UN action are only part of the answer, experts caution.

“Governments are good at setting targets, but to really get things done you’re going to need more than hoping UN agencies alone can fix this,” said Waughray.

He said technology and monitoring tools to enforce the would-be treaty would be crucial.

So who are the main players controlling Earth’s final frontier? And how will the global hunt for resources affect the communities who now depend on the seas to survive?

Threat

From fast-expanding tourist resorts to disputes over maritime borders, fishing communities are finding their main source of income increasingly under threat.

In southern Thailand, a tourism boom is pitting the Chao Lay, or people of the sea, against land developers, while marine conservation efforts also limit their traditional fishing grounds.

“Our lives have changed. We have to go further and dive deeper to catch fish, and that is affecting our health,” said Ri Fongsaithan, an Urak Lawoi community elder.

Some Chao Lay have taken their plight to the courts, fighting eviction from their homes.

According to Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, the Chao Lay “generally do not assert ownership rights because they believe that land and water should not be owned or controlled by one person, but rather shared by many”.

The legal fight over the sea is also playing out at national levels.

The Latin American nations of Colombia and Nicaragua, for instance, have for decades fought over a cluster of islands in the western Caribbean – and the fishing rights around them.

In 2012, a ruling by the International Court of Justice redrew the maritime borders around the archipelago of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina in favour of Nicaragua, reducing the expanse of sea belonging to Colombia.

The loss of waters – and of income – has hit the islands’ artisanal fishermen hard, with some saying the money they make from fishing cannot even pay for the fuel to power their boats.

“Our territory at the end of the day is the ocean,” said Erlid Arroyo, secretary of agriculture and fishing at the governor’s office in San Andres. He estimated lost income from the court ruling at “millions and millions of dollars”.

But the crisis has spurred a rethink of the island’s fishing industry, he said, with the government training fishermen to catch fish in other areas and make more of their catch.

These islands’ underwater riches might not last, however. In the last few decades, the oceans have undergone unprecedented warming while currents have shifted.