The Future of U.S. Ocean Policy: Choices For The New Century

By Biliana Cicin-Sain and Robert Knecht

The United States is about to embark on the most thorough reconsideration of its ocean policy in more than three decades. With 1998 designated as the International Year of the Ocean by the United Nations, and with both the executive branch and the Congress currently working toward developing new approaches to formulating and implementing ocean policy, a comprehensive overview of key issues and concerns is essential.

The Future of U.S. Ocean Policy provides such an overview, with an in-depth analysis of the evolution of U.S. ocean policy and a timely discussion of the most important ocean and coastal issues facing the nation. The book assesses the current status of ocean policy, examines national and international trends, and considers choices for policymakers in the 21st century. Following an introductory chapter that reviews national ocean policy and the process by which it is made, the authors:

• review the history of development of U.S. ocean and coastal policy
• examine the major ocean laws enacted in the 1970s and review and assess their record of implementation
• examine factors that will affect U.S. ocean policy in the coming decade
• discuss the need to make policy more coherent, and to develop institutional mechanisms that can foster more effective guidance and oversight
• present a set of policy options for improving U.S. ocean policy

The Future of U.S. Ocean Policy is the only recent book that focuses on national ocean policy in its entirety, and will play an important role in upcoming debates concerning the future direction of policy initiatives. Agency personnel, members and staff of nongovernmental organizations, industry groups, Congressional staffers, state and local government officials, academics, and concerned citizens will find the book an invaluable guide, as will students and faculty in courses in marine and coastal management and in environmental management.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: May 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781610913331

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dedicated.

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ONE

Introduction

A Time For Reassessment of U.S. Ocean Policy

The United States has one of the largest and probably the richest 200-mile ocean zone (formally, the Exclusive Economic Zone [EEZ]) of any nation in the world. This wet America—about equal in size to the terrestrial United States (see Figure 1.1)—is home to bountiful living and nonliving ocean resources: fisheries, marine mammals, minerals, and other energy resources. It is an area greatly valued by the American people, both for its many uses and for the awe it evokes. Rich fisheries lie off New England, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska, and in the Gulf of Mexico; large offshore oil and gas deposits exist in the Gulf of Mexico and off California and Alaska; stunningly beautiful beaches line virtually all U.S. shores. And 95 percent of the trade that keeps the nation prosperous is carried on those oceans through ports such as New York-New Jersey, Los Angeles-Long Beach, Houston, and New Orleans. Marine transportation, commercial and recreational fishing, development of offshore oil and gas, swimming and beaching, protecting and viewing marine mammals, military operations, waste disposal, aesthetic enjoyment—these are among the many values that Americans seek to obtain from their ocean.

Why This Book?

It has been thirty-three years since Congress enacted legislation that focused unprecedented attention on the nation’s coasts and oceans and led to the establishment of both a vice president—led Marine Sciences Council and the blue ribbon Commission on Marine Science, Engineering and Resources. The so-called Stratton Commission examined the U.S. stake in its oceans and coasts in a comprehensive manner, as had never been done before, and in its seminal 1969 report, Our Nation and the Sea, provided a blueprint for U.S. action to conserve and manage the bountiful resources and values found there.

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FIGURE 1.1. Map of U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (shown in white). Courtesy of the U.S. Department of State.

No similar comprehensive assessment of U.S. ocean and coastal policy has since been done, and many people now recognize that it is sorely needed to assess the many changes that have taken place since the late 1960s as well as to consider possible future trends and challenges.

The ocean situation in the United States has changed dramatically since the 1969 Stratton report (Knecht, Cicin-Sain, and Foster 1998). The Stratton Commission’s good work led directly to the establishment of the nation’s ocean agency—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and to the enactment of innovative coastal zone management legislation. The decade immediately following the Stratton Commission’s report saw a rise in environmental consciousness, the emergence of energy use and supply as a major issue, and many new ocean and coastal programs enacted into law—programs dealing with such ocean issues as marine mammals, ports and harbors, water quality, marine sanctuaries, ocean dumping, fisheries, and offshore oil and gas. The subsequent period also saw significant growth in populations in coastal areas, and an attendant rise in conflicts among various users of coastal resources and space. The offshore jurisdiction of the United States was transformed significantly during this time: In 1983, the nation asserted jurisdiction over the 200-mile EEZ, and in 1988 it declared a territorial sea of 12 miles offshore, following the international norms established by the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. A substantial increase in the interest and capacity of the coastal states and territories to deal with coastal and, increasingly, ocean issues took place during this time, as did the capacity of the educational system in the marine natural sciences and social sciences.

The latter half of the thirty-year period since the Stratton Commission has seen a corresponding burst of activity at the global level. Growing concern, especially in scientific circles, focused on two emerging problems: (1) the prospect that human activities were beginning to change the world’s climate and dangerously accelerate the loss of species and biological diversity, and (2) the realization that many societies were living unsustainably and that problems of environment and development were inextricably linked. Concern about these problems led to another seminal event: the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. As did the activist decade of the 1970s in the United States, the decade of the 1990s has seen the signing of international agreements on climate change and on biodiversity, a comprehensive Law of the Sea Convention finally enter into force, and the development of substantial international programs that deal with integrated coastal management, land-based sources of marine pollution, and the protection and sustainable use of coral reefs. Nations around the world are now experimenting with methods of integrating and harmonizing the multiple uses of their oceans and coasts, and are attempting to operationalize the vision espoused by the oceans chapter of Agenda 21—that the governance of ocean and coastal areas must be integrated in content and precautionary and anticipatory in ambit. Under Agenda 21, nations cannot solely rely on traditional approaches that govern only one resource or use at a time, but must also consider the effects of one resource or use on other resources, uses, and the environment (UNCED 1992).

The past fifteen years have also seen a fundamental transformation of the international relations regime with important implications for oceans—the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, economic globalization, the growth of regional economic blocs, and the emergence of the World Trade Organization and of trade and environmental conflicts.

Major Crosscutting Issues Need Addressing in a U.S. Ocean Policy Reassessment

All of these changes, domestic and international, pose both problems and opportunities for the United States and call for a major reassessment of U.S. ocean policy. In particular, there is the need for assessment of crosscutting problems, problems that relate to more than one sector of ocean policy. Specific areas of ocean policy, such as fisheries, have been assessed periodically, but crosscutting issues have typically not been examined since the Stratton Commission report. The crosscutting problems are important and denote deficiencies in the underlying ocean governance regime, deficiencies that must be addressed if the United States is to achieve greater benefits from its offshore zones. Symptoms of such crosscutting problems include the following:

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif The United States lacks a strategy for sustainable development of its offshore areas. Even though it declared an EEZ and expanded its territorial sea, it has done little to provide guidance for the governance of these vast ocean areas.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif Conflicts exist among users, among agencies, and between different levels of government over the use of ocean resources and space. Such conflicts have often gone unresolved, incurring significant costs.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif The U.S. approach to ocean governance has largely been through enactment of single-purpose ocean laws, which often neglect not only the effects of one resource or use on other resources or uses and on the environment, but also the cumulative impacts.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif In some cases (such as in offshore oil and gas policy), U.S. policy has oscillated between unmitigated development thrusts and the adoption of wholly conservationist approaches (such as the imposition of moratoria on new development), which prevents the attainment of sustainable development of its ocean.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif Many marine industries in this country are not faring well, in contrast to those in other countries. Examples include loss of shipping to other nations, declines in the fishing industry and the offshore oil and gas industry, and trade deficits in fishery products.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif The growth potential of newer marine and coastal economic activities, such as marine aquaculture and biotechnology, is hampered by the absence of appropriate management frameworks to properly encourage and guide development.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif Although many federal programs deal with the ocean, they tend to be fragmented and lack coherence. Few, if any, mechanisms exist for harmonizing and coordinating the actions of federal ocean agencies, in contrast to the situation in some other nations.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif There are significant problems in intergovernmental relations on ocean issues among federal, state, and local governments, with little real sharing of decision making and of revenues.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif Little attention has been paid to developing policy responses for longer-term issues, such as dealing with the effects of sea-level rise and increased storm frequency resulting from global climate change.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif There has been little nurturing of U.S. capacity for ocean governance—the joining of science and policy—bringing together the natural sciences that help us to understand physical and biological ocean processes; the marine social sciences, which lead to understanding of how humans both affect and are affected by ocean processes and activities; and the managerial capacity that is spread out in many national and state ocean agencies.

e9781610913331_img_9632.gif Although the first to enact (in the 1970s) a very elaborate body of law dealing with almost all aspects of the ocean environment, and a major leader in the 1970s in the formulation of an international constitution for the oceans (the Law of the Sea), the United States is no longer the international leader and pacesetter of ocean policy. It has, at times, been a reluctant participant in some of the major international fora dealing with oceans; whereas other national governments (e.g., Canada, Australia, Korea) have, in recent years, been expending more effort and resources in assessing their ocean and coastal interests and governmental structures and in crafting more integrated national ocean policies.

Our Perspective in Writing This Book

We have come to the writing of this book from the vantage point of more than twenty-five years of writing about, teaching, and participating in national ocean policy, mostly as policy watchers but at times as policy participants. Robert Knecht, in particular, participated directly in national ocean and coastal policy in the period 1972—1980 as the first director of the U.S. coastal management program, as director of new programs in ocean thermal energy conversion and deep seabed minerals, and as a U.S. participant in the Law of the Sea negotiations. Biliana Cicin-Sain served in the federal government as a policy analyst in 1977—1979, working especially on state-federal relations on fisheries issues. In the past two decades, we have served as consultants on ocean and coastal policy to federal agencies such as NOAA, to a number of state governments and ocean/coastal interest groups, to international entities such as the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (which is part of UNESCO), and the World Bank, and have been participants in the international ocean negotiations leading to and following the 1992 Earth Summit.

Our orientation in this book is rooted in political science and public administration. We are concerned with assessing how well the United States is governing its ocean space and resources and with what effects and consequences. In ocean policy, as in any other policy area, we are very aware of the close nexus that exists between policy and politics—that is, how a particular set of political forces and circumstances is responsible for creating particular policies, and how particular policies can, in turn, change the political dynamics of a particular issue, leading, eventually, to a subsequent change in policy. That is why, in this book, we examine in detail the political forces that were responsible for the enactment of the body of U.S. ocean and coastal law that exists today. If this body of law and policy is to be improved, those same political forces (or some variant of them) must be aligned in support of ocean policy reform.

Our studies of U.S. ocean policy over time have suggested an expression that encapsulates our view of the current policy status: U.S. ocean policy today is less than the sum of its parts. That is, while the nation has made great strides in certain sectors of ocean policy (e.g., in the control of point sources of marine pollution, the protection of marine mammals, and the establishment of coastal management), overall, the separate parts of the policy don’t fit well together. There are instances of conflicting, overlapping, or duplicative policies, and there is no vision of how the various parts may be harmonized, and of how overall guidance and principles may be developed to more effectively govern the offshore domain.

This syndrome of being less than the sum of its parts is rooted, in large part, in structural problems in the ocean governance regime, or in insufficient elaboration of the rights and obligations that various parties (federal, state governments, stakeholders) have in coastal and ocean areas. By regime, we mean the institutional arrangements governing the use of a particular set of resources and/or areas that determine the expectations of the users and their rights and duties as well as the goals that the collective activities seek to achieve. Resource regimes and their behavior have been examined in detail by a number of authors, especially Oran Young (1982). The creation of separate, largely independent management regimes for various resources and uses that are rightfully part of a larger, interconnected system is bound to cause stresses and conflict.

As a result of the body of single-purpose ocean and coastal laws enacted in the 1970s, the ocean governance structure is generally based not on area but rather on the promotion, management, or control of specific ocean resources such as oil and gas or fisheries. The challenge that the nation faces in the twenty-first century is moving from this first-generation system of ocean governance—single-use and resource-based—to a second generation based on the notion of multiple-use management within designated ocean and coastal areas.

Our reassessment of U.S. ocean policy has benefited from the work of other ocean policy scholars, many of them involved in the Ocean Governance Study Group, who over the years have provided trenchant analyses of the state, in whole or in part, of U.S. ocean policy (e.g., Mangone 1988; Miles 1992; Juda 1996; Juda and Burroughs 1990; Van Dyke 1992; Scheiber 1998; Archer et al. 1994; Hershman 1996; Hershman et al. 1999; Wilder 1998), as well as from recent analyses conducted by the National Research Council (NRC 1997), federal ocean agencies during the 1998 Year of the Ocean (YOTO 1998), the Heinz Center (Heinz Center 1998), and through the National Dialogues carried out by NOAA and other partners (e.g., Knecht, Cicin-Sain, and Foster 1998; Cicin-Sain, Knecht, and Foster 1999) in 1998—1999. An added impetus for completing this work was provided by the congressional consideration, in 1998, of the Oceans Act, which would have created a high-level commission, similar to the Stratton Commission, to create an overall strategy for United States action. While the Oceans Act passed both houses of Congress, it did not become law because differences in the House and Senate versions could not be resolved in a timely fashion (Archer 1999). Nevertheless, consideration of the Oceans Act (which could become law in subsequent Congresses) has rekindled discussion and interest in national ocean policy reassessment among the major interest groups, academics, and the public.

The Intended Audience

This book is intended for all those interested in the oceans and coastal areas of the United States and how public policy is set with regard to their use and conservation. Staff of federal and state environmental and resource agencies with missions that include coasts and oceans will find the book directly relevant to their interests and their programs. Nongovernmental organizations and ocean and coastal user groups (commercial and recreational fishers, recreational boaters, beach-goers, environmental and conservation groups, etc.) will also find, we hope, that the information in the book relates to their work and how they go about it. Staffs and members of Congress or state legislative bodies especially interested in national ocean policy, either broadly or in particular sectors (offshore oil and gas, fisheries, marine mammals, marine protected areas, etc.), and others with roles in the policy formulation process should be assisted in their work by the information and history collected here. Finally, we believe that academics in the field of marine policy will want to consider this book as a possible teaching tool.

The Evolution of U.S. Ocean Policy

In writing this book, we have found it a challenge to include a sufficient discussion of history to make the present situation understandable without overburdening the reader with too much information. And yet, since much of the current situation is a product of recent history, we must dwell on it because it both explains the kind of policy that we have today and, in part, constrains future actions. To explain how we unravel the historical thread of national ocean policy, we must first discuss major periods and recurrent tensions.

Major Periods in the Development of U.S. Ocean Policy

From the founding of the Republic to World War II, a relatively stable system of ocean policy prevailed. The United States favored freedom of navigation over the world’s oceans for its naval and commercial vessels, territorial seas of minimum breadth (3 miles), and beneficial exploitation of the ocean’s fisheries resources. In contrast, the period from 1945 to the present has been characterized by almost constant change. On the domestic front, this period can be divided roughly into four parts: 1945 to 1970, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s.

The first period, 1945—1970, was dominated by the struggle between the federal government and the coastal states over jurisdiction of the ocean areas adjacent to the shoreline. By the late 1940s, it had become clear that a substantial amount of oil and gas was contained below the seafloor and that large revenues could be obtained from its extraction. This issue was resolved—temporarily at least—with the enactment, in 1953, of the Submerged Lands Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and by a series of Supreme Court decisions that generally limited the states’ jurisdiction and ownership of offshore resources to the 3-mile territorial sea, while establishing federal authority over the outer continental shelf (beyond 3 miles).¹

The second period, the 1970s, was a time of active ocean lawmaking. Indeed, most of the law and policy that now make up the domestic legal framework for the oceans was put in place during this time. After a period of national studies and reports, and related, in part, to the move to explore inner space (the oceans) as a counterpoint to the post-Sputnik space program, Congress rather quickly enacted legislation on a wide range of ocean topics. Events of the period added the motives of environmental protection (in the early 1970s) and energy development (in the mid-1970s) to the goal of basic ocean exploration and development. Unfortunately, but understandably, almost all of this ocean legislation was single-purpose in nature, aimed at solving a specific problem (managing fish, protecting marine mammals and endangered species, fostering state coastal management programs, creating marine sanctuaries, developing offshore oil and gas resources, halting ocean dumping of sewage wastes, etc.). Few of the new laws paid more than lip service to the timely identification and effective resolution of possible conflicts with other ocean users.

The 1980s differs from the earlier active period in several important respects. Little new ocean legislation was enacted. This period also saw little action on the part of the executive branch, with the exception of the proclamation made by President Reagan in 1983 declaring U.S. control over an EEZ extending 200 miles offshore (U.S. EOP 1983) and the extension of the U.S. territorial sea in 1988 (U.S. Presidential Proclamation 5928, 1989). The focus was instead on implementation, rationalization, and retention of funding for existing programs. The Reagan administration engaged in a determined effort to shift funding obligations and, in some cases, managerial responsibilities from Washington to the states. Efforts were made at both national and state levels to reduce regulatory burdens and to simplify governmental processes. Similarly, the administration attempted to restore market forces as the principal regulator of the economy rather than rely on explicit government intervention. For the oceans, this meant a period of decreased activity—few new programs and less funding for existing programs.

In the 1990s, major changes took place in ocean and coastal policy, particularly at the international level. A major change to the Law of the Sea Convention, in the form of a new agreement revising the deep-seabed mining regime, made the convention acceptable to major industrialized nations such as the United States, which, in 1994, indicated its intention to seek Senate ratification of the treaty. In June 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) brought forward recommendations for major changes in ocean and coastal management through Chapter 17 of Agenda 21 (the global blueprint on environment and development), and through the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Framework Convention on Climate Change (Cicin-Sain and Knecht 1993).

The 1990s saw a great deal of domestic experimentation in ocean, coastal, and estuarine management, especially at the local level, typically involving increased participation by stakeholders (private sector, environmental interests, academia, state and local governments) in decisions about ocean and coastal resources. The emergence of new management concepts (such as watershed management and ecosystem management) also marked this period. By the end of the 1990s, there emerged a growing consensus about the problems besetting single-sector management of the oceans, and the need to develop more integrated management approaches. Major developments at the end of the decade included initiatives to create a national commission to provide a comprehensive examination of ocean policy and to create a national ocean council (i.e., the Oceans Act of 1998 H.R. 3445 IH, 105th Congress, 2nd Session, March 12, 1998, Commission on Ocean Policy).

Recurrent Tensions in U.S. Ocean Policy

²

The earlier historical overview of the evolution of American concern with the oceans and of the making of U.S. ocean policy suggests a number of recurrent tensions that have tended to underlie (and continue to underlie) thinking and practice in this area: U.S. interests as a coastal power versus as a maritime nation; internationalism versus unilateralism; federal versus state control over ocean resources; development versus environmental protection; private versus governmental role in resource development.

Sea Power versus Coastal State Power

Since the United States is one of the major naval/maritime nations in the world and also possesses some of the world’s richest coastal oceans, there has always been a fundamental tension between asserting the maritime right of nations to roam the sea freely and allowing the coastal states the right to control access to and use of the near-shore ocean. However, starting with the Truman Proclamation of 1945 establishing U.S. control over resources in the continental shelf, and culminating with the Reagan proclamation of the EEZ in 1983, the United States has tended to emphasize its coastal state, rather than its maritime, interests. As we shall see, this trend continues in the 1970s through the 1990s, although throughout this period, the U.S. continues to use its naval forces to assert its interpretations of international law when the actions of other countries adversely affect its freedom of navigation.

Internationalism versus Unilateralism

There has also been tension over whether the United States should lead or follow in the shaping of new international law for the oceans. U.S. foreign policy has often experienced periodic swings between internationalist and isolationist impulses—with the end of the Vietnam War clearly marking a new period of isolationism. Traditionally, ocean policy has emphasized the internationalist dimension. Until 1945, the United States steadfastly supported high seas freedoms and narrow territorial seas and clearly was the leader in creating the new post—World War II international institutions such as the United Nations. Beginning in the 1940s, however, a tendency to act unilaterally vis-à-vis international ocean law has been more dominant. This is certainly as true of the 1945 Truman Proclamation as it is of the 200-mile fishery limit established by the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act in 1976, much to the opposition of State Department officials. The ultimate manifestation of the go it alone philosophy was the U.S. decision not to sign the 1982 Law of the Sea agreement after playing a very important role in shaping the negotiations over a nine-year period. The 1980s also saw the United States use unilateral economic sanctions against nations that acted in ways inconsistent with its environmental policy. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration declared its intention to seek ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty, but the pendulum has yet to shift to a more internationally oriented stance.

Federal Jurisdiction versus State Jurisdiction over Ocean Resources

Another recurrent and persistent tension focuses on how much power and authority over ocean resources and users the state and federal governments should wield respectively. State-federal controversies over marine resources reached a high point in the 1950s, with this question occupying a prominent position in the 1952 presidential election. The 1960s, however, saw a definite trend toward an expanded federal role in the management of ocean resources, a trend that was to culminate in the 1970s with the enactment of a number of ocean laws, some of which explicitly wrested management authority away from the states and vested it in the federal government. The 1980s and 1990s, on the other hand, have seen a swing back to states’ control, with the states clearly signaling their intention to play a more significant role in the management of resources in federal waters.

Ocean Resources Development versus Environmental Protection

The tension between resource development and environmental protection began to mount at the end of the 1960s, following disasters such as the Santa Barbara oil spill. It clearly dominated much of the debate during the passage of the ocean legislation during the 1970s, with conservation and development groups each winning in separate battles. This tension was manifested at a number of other times during the earlier periods, particularly with regard to the management of fisheries and wildlife resources, and it recurs periodically, with conservationists mounting battles against overfishing and overhunting whenever signs of species depletion become evident. The development-environment tension played a significant role in the ocean controversies of the 1980s. Given the legislative gains made by both environmental and development interests in the 1970s, both camps acquired a variety of tools to block each other’s actions well into the 1980s and 1990s, sometimes resulting in policy and programmatic paralysis. The concept of sustainable development, which attempts to reconcile both environment and development goals, entered the picture in the 1990s as a possible avenue for reducing this tension.

Government Role versus Private Role in Resource Development

The extent to which government should take an active role in the actual development of ocean resources and the extent to which it should guide and regulate industry activities is another recurring tension in policy making. In general, and in contrast to the practice of many other nations, the United States has preferred to rely primarily on market forces, the free enterprise system, and the development of nonburdensome legal and regulatory frameworks in its governance of ocean resources. There are perennial calls, however, for the government to take a more active role in the development of such resources as fisheries, oil and gas, or aquaculture. A case in point concerned the debate on the 1978 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act Amendments when serious proposals were put forward for the federal government itself to actually conduct the offshore oil and gas program through the exploration phase and for the industry role to be restricted to the development and production phase.

To set the stage for the ocean governance challenges of the twenty-first century, it is important to understand the concept of ocean governance, how the needs for that governance have changed over time, and what factors need to be taken into account in designing an ocean governance regime.

The Concept of Ocean Governance

In our view, U.S. national ocean policy in its broadest sense is comprised of two parts: national interests and concerns related to the domestic ocean, and U.S. interests and concerns related to the global ocean. In both cases, there is a need for governance of ocean space and the resources contained therein; hence, ocean governance is a central concept in national ocean policy.

We use the term ocean governance to mean the architecture and makeup of the regime used to govern behavior, public and private, relative to an ocean area and the resources and activities contained therein. Ocean management means the process by which specific resources or areas are controlled to achieve desired objectives. Policy refers to a purposive course of action followed by government or nongovernmental actors in response to some set of perceived problems (Miles 1992). National ocean policy, therefore, refers to a purposive course of action followed largely by governments in response to a set of perceived problems (or opportunities) related to the oceans and coasts.

In terms of coverage, we apply the term ocean governance to the entire band of ocean adjacent to the United States that is under some form of jurisdiction by this nation: the territorial sea, the EEZ, and that portion of the U.S. continental shelf that, on a geological basis, extends beyond the 200-mile EEZ. The fundamental goal of a system of ocean governance, in our view, is to maximize the long-term benefits to the public from the conservation and use of ocean resources and ocean space.

The Functions of Government in Ocean Areas

To provide these benefits, governments must perform several rather different kinds of functions on behalf of the people they serve. The major functions of government vis-à-vis the ocean are shown in Table 1.1. The federal government is responsible for the first three functions—international relations, national security, and interstate commerce—throughout the territorial sea and the EEZ. While the federal government and the coastal state governments share responsibilities for the last three functions—proprietarial, public trust, and regulatory—the states are generally responsible for them within state waters (0 to 3 miles offshore) and the federal government is responsible beyond that boundary (Knecht 1986).

The Growing Need for Ocean Governance

When, how, and why does the need for governance arise? In the case of primitive societies, the need for government first arose out of the needs for common defense and dispute resolution (Mair 1962). The need to adjudicate disputes authoritatively among individuals or groups that cannot be handled by existing institutions, such as the family, has traditionally been one of the major reasons for the creation of some form of government. One could speculate that the situation that characterizes the current management of marine areas—where conflicts increasingly cannot be handled by existing means—calls for the emergence of more authoritative conflict management