EDF’s 2005 document hails staffer’s slot on fishery council as a way to ‘work’ regulatory process
By Richard Gaines
Staff Writer
Gloucester Daily Times [MA]
November 15, 2009
Since at least the 1990s, [Environmental Defense Fund] has been pushing globally to have commonly owned ocean fish stocks converted into catch quotas that could be assigned as rights, creating tradeable market products that attract capital investment. New England has become the primary battleground.
By Commander Trevor Rush
U.S. Navy
Those who study international law know that state practice is critical to the development of customary international law. Sufficient actions (or inactions) by states can lead to a situation in which international law will support that which it once would not because it has become “customary.” As a Navy lawyer, I am extremely interested in state practice concerning the law of the sea. Within that body of law, there are two areas of state practice that are seemingly more in tension with each other as we move further into the 21st century. The first area is the exercise of the freedom to navigate the world’s oceans. Freedom of navigation supports global prosperity. More than 80 percent of the world’s trade travels by water. Such freedom is also crucial for U.S. national security. Not just for naval warships, but equally so for commercial shipping. The U.S. relies on non-governmental maritime shipping to meet two-thirds of U.S. global sealift requirements. For this and many other reasons, the United States has been concerned for centuries with keeping the oceans open for trade and commerce.
Environmental Leader
Marine ecosystems including seagrass meadows, mangroves and salt marshes have a much greater capacity to trap carbon than land carbon sinks such as forests, according to a report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The organization believes ocean ecosystems are essential to combating global warming.
The IUCN partnership report, The Management of Natural Coastal Carbon Sinks, indicates that quick global action is needed to protect coastal marine ecosystems due to a loss of two-thirds of seagrass meadows and 50 percent of mangrove forests caused by human activities, which is reducing their carbon storage capacity. The study says this loss is comparable to the decline of the Amazon forests.
Vermont Law School
On November 4th, Energizer Brian Martin and I had the privilege of attending the New England Regional Ocean Law and Policy Workshop: Offshore Wind Facility Siting. The goals of the workshop were to 1) identify common legal issues encountered by New England state and federal managers when considering offshore wind; 2) understand the research, work and progress done on thus far on these issues; 3) discuss coordinated efforts to address these legal issues and; 4) consider future collaborative coordination between researchers (at academic intuitions) and management agencies. The workshop aimed to identify what legal barriers existed in the development of offshore wind facilities and how collaborative and coordinated efforts across agencies and with research institutions could provide solutions and generate the development of offshore wind facilities.
A number of scientific organizations are working on pint-size robots that will act much like schools of fish to explore and monitor the oceans.
Scientists have so far used their understanding of physics and fluid dynamics, combined with what direct observations are available, to infer how the ocean works. These inferences remain, in many cases, best guesses – albeit very well-informed best guesses. But scientists inevitably dream of a day when they can directly observe the goings-on of the ocean.
That day, it seems, is moving closer and closer to actuality.