Book Review Routledge Handbook of

Edited by Biliana Cicin-Sain, David L. VanderZwaag and Miriam C. Balgos

Published by Routledge

eBook edition, 2015 ISBN: 978-1-315-76564-8 682 pages

To write a review in 2021 of a book first published in 2015 may seem like an unusual activity. The reasons for the delayed review are two-fold. Firstly, this review aims to test the continuing utility of the handbook, which endeavours to ‘provide succinct lessons learned and emerging best practices, which are directly relevant to the growing number of nations and regions that are also beginning to pursue integrated ocean policies’, and that ‘should be useful to governmental, non-governmental, and private sector practitioners involved in ocean and coastal management around the world, as well as to graduate and undergraduate students in marine and environmental policy.’

Secondly, this review aims to assess if, during the interregnum between the date of the book’s publication and now, the acknowledgement by the book’s contributors that ‘the pace at which management and governance of the oceans is proceeding does not match the pace of the degradation of the marine environment and its resources’ has occurred, and to assess the impact of this on the ongoing utility of the handbook.

The book is one of the main products of an international programme of research on national and regional ocean policies underwritten by philanthropic funding from the Nippon Foundation. The programme spanned from 2004 to 2007. During this time, the programme undertook two workshops in Tokyo and New York in 2004, and an international meeting, ‘The Ocean Policy Summit: International Conference on Integrated Ocean Policy: National and Regional Experiences, Prospects, and Emerging Practices’ (TOPS) in Lisbon in 2005. The aims of the programme were to: • ‘develop a framework for cross-national analysis of national and regional ocean policies, and for drawing lessons useful to other cases in other countries/regions’; • ‘carry out systematic comparative analyses of national and regional ocean policies in a selected number of countries/ regions on principles embodied, institutional arrangements, and other governance variables’; • ‘draw lessons from the comparative analyses and develop suggested guidance for other nations/regions contemplating national/regional ocean policy formulation and implementation’; and • ‘disseminate the results of the research work broadly’.

The book was edited by three internationally recognised marine law and policy practitioners: Biliana Cicin-Sain, Director of the Gerard J. Mangone Center for Marine Policy and Professor of Marine Policy at the University of Delaware; David L. VanderZwaag, Professor of Law and the Canada Research Chair in Ocean Law and Governance at the Marine and Environmental Law Institute, Dalhousie University, Canada; and Miriam C. Balgos, Associate Scientist at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, University of Delaware, and Program Coordinator for the Global Ocean Forum.

The three editors were part of a sixty-strong mixture of international academics and practitioners in the areas of marine law and ocean policy. That pool included expertise from Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Jamaica, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam. Contributors to the book were also drawn from four regional organisations: East Asian Seas, the European Union, Pacific Islands and SubSaharan Africa.

The contents of the handbook comprise twenty-one chapters and four appendices. The chapters are divided into: Part I: Introduction (Chapters 1 to 2); Part II: National Ocean Policies (Chapters 3 to 17); and Part III: Regional Ocean Policies (Chapters 18 to 21).

The practice of, and research into, ocean governance continues to grow exponentially, with an increased interest in careers in this area by new entry job seekers. Since the publication of this book in 2015, there has been a significant interest in the development and application of

marine policies by international bodies (e.g. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD]) and regional bodies (e.g. European Marine Board).

The Group of Seven (G7) and the Group of Twenty-Two (G22) have all added marine policy objectives to their regular meeting agendas. In the case of the G7, this has been by means of The Future of Seas and Oceans Flagship Initiative that looks, amongst other things, at the governance of sustained observations of the ocean. In 2019, the G22 added the policy objective to achieve a net zero goal for marine plastics disposal in the world’s oceans.

The book shows its strength as a useful handbook that provides applicable lessons learned and sources of pertinent best practices. In addition, its utility as a handbook still extends to both the practitioner and the student of ocean policies at national and regional levels.

The only weakness of the book is one that its authors acknowledged, which was described at the start of this review: that ocean policy issues have continued to grow apace, remaining ahead of states’ and regional bodies’ ability to formulate integrated and harmonised marine policies, and associated regulations to address these issues. Some examples of these emerging issues are: • managing ocean acidification; • controlling illegal and unregulated fishing on the high seas; • managing the impact of the exploitation of marine genetic resources; • achieving net zero in respect to marine litter; • managing the impacts of deep sea mining; • remediating the continued warming of the oceans giving

rise to the melting of the polar ice caps; and • managing the impacts of carbon sequestration in the oceans.

Since the publication of the book in 2015, the world has seen increases in regional ocean geopolitical tensions. These events are and will impact on both national and regional ocean policies. This book still has a place in academic libraries and in individual practitioners’ bookcases. That said, in recognition of the book’s own acknowledgment of the need to keep up with the changes in the seascape of ocean policy issues, the authors and publishers should consider commissioning a second edition to cover these new issues.

(Reviewed by Roland Rogers, FSUT Writer and Researcher in Ocean Governance)

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