Use of the oceans 1.1
“responsibility for the seas” (Vidas, 2010) which would define the content of such a responsibility and specify who specifically is responsible. The aims of a future ocean governance should be to overcome the marine crisis and ensure compliance with planetary boundaries and guardrails (WBGU, 2006, 2011; Rockström et al., 2009; Box 1-1). The extent to which the international law of the sea, as a multilateral treaty, can successfully regulate such a responsibility for the sea in the Anthropocene (Vidas, 2010; Gjerde, 2011) – and provide a suitable framework for a transformation towards sustainable use within the confines of planetary limits – is one of the key questions that this report examines and attempts to answer.
1.1 Use of the oceans Humans have been using the oceans since very early on in their history. Analyses conducted by Halpern et al. (2008) show that human influence can be proved in all parts of the world’s seas and oceans in the meantime. Today, 40 % of people live no more than 100 km from a coast, and more than 90 % of global long-distance merchandise trade travels by sea. The sections that follow discuss the direct uses to which humankind puts the marine environment. The seas provide numerous ecosystem services from which humanity benefits (MA, 2005a), though not all of them are described in detail here. Many ecosystem services and their use depend on the marine biosphere and its innate diversity. Examples include the use of marine organisms for food, to generate power and for medical products. Others include tourism, functions that regulate the climate and interactions with the atmosphere, such as the absorption of CO2 by the ocean and the production of oxygen (COML, 2011). Some of these uses generate direct economic benefit. The value of others is less easy to measure, but no less important.
1.1.1 The legendary sea and its cultural meanings Any discussion of the use of the sea by humankind must also address its symbolic and cultural significance. One striking feature here is the lasting ambivalence of the oceans as a source of both inner longing and danger to humanity. Studies of the history of culture and mentalities (Corbin, 1994; Mollat du Jourdin, 1993) show that, for all their long-standing service as a source of food, a means of transport and a convenient place to dump waste, the oceans have primarily been emotionally perceived as a terrifying place and as a
source of constant dangers – right up until the modern age. The Bible, for instance, shaped our collective imagination regarding the sea for many centuries. Since little was known about the world’s oceans for long periods of human history, they were seen as a weapon of divine retribution and a constant source of potential disaster. They evoked the sinfulness of humankind and symbolized the possibility of universal chaos. Coastal areas and the limes between sea and sky on the distant horizon appeared as places of tension from which humans sought to escape, as hastily as possible, back to terra firma. Mediterranean, Celtic, Scandinavian, Slavic and Germanic myths alike are suffused with the fear of storms, floods, fog, sea monsters and shipwrecks (as are extra-European ones). Dying at see was the greatest fear of all: the corpse may never be found, and the departed spirit may be condemned to aimless, eternal wandering and be refused resurrection. Mollat du Jourdin (1993: 248) assumes that is why “seafarers’ religious convictions endured for so long”. All kinds of taboos and superstitious practices were associated with the sea, which was perceived as a source of omens and evil premonitions. Its sheer boundlessness was a principal source of fear: “Defying space and time, the sea, with its permanence and endless expanse, surpasses the fleeting generations of a humanity that is tied to a limited space.” However, “it challenges the constancy of the continents with its erratic moods, facing down human industry with a wall of strict silence. The sea forces humankind to give itself over to her completely, for she is the sovereign ruler” (Mollat du Jourdin, 1993: 241). Modern humanity has been loath to subject itself to such coercion. Once human worldviews and cosmologies had been secularized and were being examined from a scientific perspective, and new aesthetic interpretations had been developed, in the modern era seas and oceans were seen as marvels to be wondered at, as media for discovering the world. This has given rise to a “yearning for the sea” (Corbin, 1994). Fear of the elemental, untameable might of the oceans has been supplanted by a dream of happiness, materialized in an island of bliss, and by a sublimated projection of the concept of risk symbolized in the notion of ‘setting sail’. De facto, the terrors of the sea are still there, but they are giving way to a fascination with, and objectivization of, any possible threats under the influence of developments in nautical technology, coastal fortifications and the system of international shipping. The emergence of modern nation states and economies was greatly expedited by the first wave of globalization (the ‘Age of Discovery’), which took place on the world’s oceans. International relations, international law and free world trade developed on this basis. Ships’ loading capacity
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