Dr. Michael K. Orbach
Director, Marine Laboratory, Duke University
Beyond the Freedom of the Seas: Ocean Policy for the Third Millennium
Up until the end of the first millenium anno Domini humans used the oceans primarily at their margins, lacking the desire or the ability to venture further out to sea. In the second millenium humans exploded in their exploration of the seas, crossing, charting and beginning to exploit the spaces and resources of most of the world's oceans, at least to the depth of a few hundred fathoms.
In the last half of this second millenium, the formal doctrine of mare liberum, "freedom of the seas", emerged under which most uses of the world's oceans remained unregulated within any common community except for the constraints of individual nation states upon their own citizens. This "freedom of the seas" doctrine emerged for a very practical reason: No single nation or group of nations could effectively either monitor or control activities on the oceans except within fairly close proximity to land, and thus the "freedom" approach emerged as the negotiated compromise. Incursions have been made into this "freedom", notably in the 200-mile extensions of jurisdiction among coastal nations in the 1970s and 80s and in such proposals as the Common Heritage of Mankind approach to ocean resources advanced during the United Nations Law of the Sea negotiations. However, most of the world's oceans still remain in a state of "freedom" as an unregulated commons.
This "freedom" has had tragic consequences for many of the living marine resources and for water quality and habitat of the world's oceans as well as promoting unnecessary competition and conflict over ocean space and resources. We now have the technological capability to monitor and, if we wish, control human activities virtually anywhere on the world's ocean. This presentation presented alternative futures for the governance of the world's oceans and their resources, "beyond the freedom of the seas" and into the third millenium.
