*EPF416 04/22/2004
Byliner: Senior U.S. Diplomat for Oceans Surveys Marine Diplomacy
(Accession to Law of the Sea Convention is a top priority) (1530)

The following article appears in the April 2004 issue of the State Department electronic journal Global Issues. The issue is titled "Shared Oceans, Shared Future." The entire journal is available at http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itgic/0404/ijge/ijge0404.htm.

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Diplomacy and the Oceans
By David A. Balton
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Fisheries
U.S. Department of State

The Department of State is engaged with the world community to ensure responsible use of ocean resources.

Protection and sustainable development of the oceans and their resources are critical to the future of our planet, its people, and myriad life forms. Worldwide, more than 50 percent of the population lives in coastal areas - a figure that will rise to 75 percent by 2025. Our daily lives are affected by weather systems with oceanic origins, by the availability of protein in the form of seafood, and by opportunities for recreation and tourism. Maintaining and restoring healthy marine ecosystems, understanding the role of the oceans in global processes, and protecting the safety of commercial navigation are vital goals for the United States, goals that can be achieved only through international cooperation.

International Ocean Initiatives

One of the highest ocean policy priorities for the Department of State is U.S. accession to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. The United States will benefit, perhaps more than any other nation, from becoming party to the convention. This treaty and the legal framework it codifies provide a structure in which the international community can work to reach agreement on the complex issues associated with the vast resources of the ocean - including navigational freedoms, sustainable resource use, biological diversity, deep seabed mining, and use of the continental shelf.

The Department of State has been actively engaged with its international partners in pursuing objectives compatible with the convention. One of our most exciting initiatives is the White Water to Blue Water Partnership (WW2BW), first announced at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2002. The program has been launched in the Wider Caribbean Region, but this model may serve as a blueprint for future programs in Africa and the South Pacific.

The initiative creates an international alliance of governments, international organizations, financial institutions, and others to promote integrated watershed and marine ecosystem-based management. It promotes regional cooperation in pursuit of a shared goal to protect and utilize a shared resource. The objectives are to address land-based sources of marine pollution, promote sustainable fisheries, improve agricultural and forestry practices, meet the challenges associated with tourism, and prevent the degradation of coastal areas. WW2BW also facilitates cooperation and good governance within and among nations and stakeholders.

At a recent conference in Miami, Florida, WW2BW moved closer toward the realization of its objectives. More than 700 participants from 32 countries in the Wider Caribbean Region gathered for the March 22-26 event hosted by the Department of State. Forming and fostering some 70 partnerships was an important achievement of the meeting as international organizations, national governments, nongovernmental organizations, private business, and academic institutions joined in agreements to pursue various resource conservation efforts.

Living Marine Resources

The international community faces a critical time in the quest for sustainable fisheries. The most recent statistics of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicate that more than 70 percent of fisheries are either overfished or are fished at their maximum capacity. In coming years, production from many key fisheries will likely decline. Demand for fisheries products, however, will continue to increase. The prospect of this growing shortfall poses our greatest fisheries challenge today.

At the Sustainable Development Summit, world leaders acknowledged the vital contribution of marine fisheries to economic and food security and to biodiversity in general. Leaders established a number of fisheries commitments, including a call "to maintain or restore stocks to levels that can produce maximum sustainable yield with the aim of achieving these goals for depleted stocks on an urgent basis and where possible not later than 2015."

Fulfillment of these commitments will require a great deal of cooperation at the international level. The Department of State, primarily through its Office of Marine Conservation, actively pursues sustainable fisheries worldwide at the global, regional, and bilateral levels. For example, we are working globally through the United Nations and the FAO to make sure that critical international agreements, such as the 1995 U.N. Fish Stocks Agreement, are implemented. That agreement made new strides in attempting to conserve and manage species that cross jurisdictional lines on a sustainable basis.

The United States is also an active partner in international cooperative efforts to reduce "overcapacity" in fisheries industries. In many fisheries there are simply more boats than are economically viable. The ecosystem cannot replenish the resource at the rate at which the fish are being harvested. An additional strain on fish stocks comes from illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. The United States helped to craft an international plan of action that encourages states and regional fisheries management organizations to use all available measures, in accordance with international law, to combat illegal fishing.

Regionally, the United States is actively engaged in efforts through regional fisheries management organizations to conserve and manage the fish stocks under their purview. In these organizations, the Department of State promotes a strong conservation agenda while also seeking to ensure that U.S. fishers receive a fair allocation of shared resources.

The Department of State also works one-on-one with individual countries to address fisheries problems. With Canada, for example, we recently overhauled a complex 1985 treaty to manage the salmon fisheries off our west coast and concluded another agreement to manage fisheries for salmon returning to the Yukon River, one of the longest transboundary rivers in the world. We have recently developed other agreements with Canada for sharing Pacific whiting and to better regulate fishing for albacore tuna in the Pacific, and we have negotiated another treaty with Russia to protect polar bears in the Bering Sea area.

A common thread that runs through virtually all of these undertakings is the need to manage fisheries as part of the oceans ecosystems in which they occur. As difficult as it is to manage fisheries on a stock-by-stock basis, we now recognize the imperative to take account of other affected species, including those nontarget species caught as "bycatch." These are species simply caught in the nets, but not intended for harvest. These incidental catches are causing serious depletion of some species, and U.S. law now requires commercial fishers to take a variety of precautions to keep bycatch to a minimum. Still, it remains a huge challenge, even for wealthy and technologically advanced countries such as the United States. Developing countries face even a more difficult task in adopting the advanced equipment that is necessary to prevent excessive bycatch.

Broad Engagement

The preceding examples are illustrative of the broad engagement that the United States maintains with the international community on oceans issues, many of which are discussed in various bodies of the United Nations. The Department of State will participate in an upcoming U.N. informal meeting to focus on new uses of the ocean, such as conservation and management of biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction and offshore energy generation. The department also participates as an observer in the work of the International Seabed Authority, established by the Law of the Sea Convention, to regulate the exploitation of minerals in the deep seabed.

We are engaged in preparatory work leading to the U.S. submission of data to the commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to establish the outer limits of the U.S. shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from shore. The commission is composed of experts who review submissions from nations seeking to establish the limits of their extended continental shelves.

We also work at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) on vessel safety and vessel-source pollution. For example, in the IMO we have taken a leadership role on maritime and port security rules in order to counteract threats of terrorism. The Department of State also advocated a science-based solution to the threat of introduction of invasive species in ships' ballast water and is working to improve guidelines for the establishment of Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas.

Conclusion

For generations, humans have believed that it was beyond their power to damage the oceans or to deplete its vast resources. We now see the fallacy of this view, as mounting evidence demonstrates the human impact upon oceans. The oceans and their resources, by their very nature, are international matters, for no nation acting alone can effectively manage and protect them. It is not surprising, then, that oceans issues have risen on the international agenda and have become a key focus of the mission of the Department of State.

David A. Balton serves as deputy assistant secretary of state for oceans and fisheries in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. He previously served as director of the State Department's Office of Marine Conservation.

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(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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