Affiliations: Visiting Scholar, George Washington University Law School; Executive Secretary, Sargasso Sea Commission, Washington, DC, USA
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author. E-mail: davidacfreestone@gmail.com. The views expressed here are those of the author alone and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is associated.
Abstract: We already know that the ocean is at a crisis point. For the last twenty years and more, scientific report after report has flagged the increasing decline of ocean biodiversity and the damaging impacts of human activities –including over-extraction of resources and pollution, by plastic, of course, but overwhelmingly by anthropogenic climate change. It is only by allowing wildness to return –allowing natural ecosystems to return and heal themselves can we save the planet from ourselves. There are already two complex legal regimes governing both the ocean and climate change: the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) and the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). However, it appears, “the Law of the Sea and the Climate Change regimes are two of the giants of the international law treaty arena, yet ... they appear like ships that pass in the night.” How do we move forward on saving the blue half of our endangered planet?
Keywords: Ocean, law of the sea, climate change, blue half of planet
