If India Won’t Work to Conserve Our Oceanic Resources, Peace Can’t Be on Its Agenda – The Wire

Environment Indias stress on protecting the high-seas freedoms in conservation dialogues seems to stem from our ambition of being a major player in deep-seabed mining.

The high seas now suffer from an unrestrained use of resources in the face of several tedious regulations, the lack of a strong institutional framework and reluctant political will. Credit: Kanenori/pixabay

The oceans contain it all: life, biodiversity, energy resources, genetic resources and theyre amongthe biggest carbon sinks on the planet. This is why its almost silly thattheir importance has to be reiterated before pressing for theirconservation. The Indian Ocean in particular is also a vast reservoir of economic resources: off-shore oil, fish stock and rich marine biodiversity. Unfortunately, itis also one of the dirtiest oceans in the world, polluted by plastic debris and chemical runoff.

Under international law, a countrys sovereignty the exclusive economic zone where a country exercises itsjurisdiction goes upto 200 nautical miles (around 370 km) from its coastal baseline.Thismeans that thenationgoverns this area as it governs its landmass. The effective governance of a natural resource, which includes the oceans, should thus ideally be a balance between its utilisationand conservation.

Beyond the thresholdof a countrys territorial sovereignty at sea, the waters are deemed international and commonly called the high seas, or areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), where no individual country can exercise itsexclusive rights. This distinction is merely legal; in the natural world, there are no borders. What happens beyond 200 nautical miles affects what happens within it, and vice-versa. Previously, this hasnt beena problem, but the high seas now suffer from an unrestrained use of resources in the face of several tediousregulations, the lack of a strong institutional framework and reluctant political will.

Now, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is awidely ratified treatywith 150 members. And the treatment of the high seas under UNCLOS has traditionally been centred onthe freedoms that nations haveto exploit the high seas. This could be by enabling them tofish, navigate, lay submarine cables or pipelines, etc. in the ABNJ. Eventually, however, the international community started to realisethat the member nations were over-exploiting the resources and that they had set the health of the high season a decline. After years of negotiations, in 2015, the UN adopted a resolution to develop a legally binding treaty for the conservation of marine life beyond national territorial waters. This forthcoming treaty is an international legally binding instrument (ILBI) in negotiations.

The main idea of negotiating anILBI is to detail proposals of the elements that could comprise the treaty, such as conservation measures, environmental impact assessments and its components, marine genetic resources, capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology. This at leastconcerns the conservation side of living marine resources. However, international law under the UNCLOS, by virtue of the ILBI, is now making a distinction between living and non-living marine resources. While the conservation of living resources is being negotiated under the ILBI, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) is the regulatory body in charge of granting licenses to nationsfor exploiting the deep seabed for non-living marine resources.

Indias stand in the meetings on the ILBI has been off-handed;the representativeshave been repeatingthe basic tenants of environmental law such as the need to uphold principles of international law, need for oceanic conservation, etc. Wehave been stressing constantly on not compromising freedoms on the high-seas. In a nutshell, as far as the high seas go, Indias stand in ILBI negotiations is that:

On the other hand, our presence in the ISA has beenmore pronounced. Indias stress on protecting the high-seas freedoms in conservation dialogues seems to stem from our ambition of being a major player in deep-seabed mining. In one of the three deep-seabed exploration areas currently permitted by international law, China, South Korea, Germany and India are among the countriesprospecting for polymetallic nodules and sulphides (in the Central Indian basin). While the regime for the extractionof metals and minerals is more or less well-defined, the regulation of living resources in the high seas is stillunder consideration.

Understanding that, as a developing country, India cannot curb resource-exploitation in keeping with our needs present and future it would still be safe to say that India is a dominant power bordering the Indian Ocean in southern and southeast Asia, and our stand both national and international counts.

The India Foundation is organising an Indian Ocean Conference in August 2017 with several countries of the relevant region to discuss its governance. The organising committee (according to the programme) has many officials fromthe Ministry of External Affairs. But it is strange to note that there is no representation from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, which is in charge of governing the oceans forIndia. So it appears as if the only job of this ministryis to obtain licenses to exploit marine resources globally. The About us section on their websitecontains these lines:The Ministry also deals with science and technology for exploration and exploitation of ocean resources (living and non-living), and play nodal role for Antarctic/Arctic and Southern Ocean research.This is probably an inadvertently honest declaration of what Indias plan is for governing the oceans: exploitation without conservation.

We cannot expect to use upnon-living resources without playing an active role in protecting the high-seas marine ecosystem. We cant in the long run talk about peace and prosperity if addressing marine pollution is not on our agenda. Most oceans conservation programmes are under climate change research and pertain to the Indian coastline and limited fish resources. We seem to not be having any discussion on protecting marine biodiversity or marine genetic resources or high-seas governance at all, for that matter. Balancingthe utilisationand the protection of a resource is complex and there are no easy answers. However, thisis precisely why we need more academic and public engagement onthe topic within India.

Ipshita Chaturvediis an alumna of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences and the University of Melbourne. She works for a think-tank in Mumbai.

Categories: Environment, Featured, South Asia

Tagged as: benefit sharing, high seas, Indian Ocean, International Seabed Authority, marine biodiversity, marine genetic resources, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Ministry of External Affairs, seabed mining, UNCLOS

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If India Won't Work to Conserve Our Oceanic Resources, Peace Can't Be on Its Agenda - The Wire