Marine Conservation

The Convention also maximizes legal certainty for United States sovereign rights over ocean resources in the largest EEZ in the world, as well as energy and mineral and other resources on our extended continental shelf. The Convention provides the mechanism to assure international recognition of additional United States sovereign rights on an extended continental shelf. Moreover, due to overfished and depleted fish populations, effective management of migratory fish stocks and fisheries will continue to be a contentious issue for the foreseeable future. The Convention is widely accepted as the legal framework under which all international fisheries are regulated and enforced. The Convention imposes responsibilities on the coastal states to manage their fishery resources responsibly and provides a process for resolving conflicts between competing users. The Coast Guard defends United States sovereign rights by protecting our precious ocean resources from poaching, unlawful incursion, and illegal exploitation. Joining the Convention places these sovereign rights on a firmer legal foundation, bolstering the Coast Guard’s continued ability to ensure our Nation’s sovereign rights are respected.

In particular, becoming a party to the Convention will give the Coast Guard greater leverage in our efforts to eliminate illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. American fishermen are currently abiding by standards contemplated by the Convention and further detailed in the related UN Fish Stocks Agreement. They are adversely affected by foreign fishermen who illegally harvest highly migratory fish stocks. In another anomalous situation, the United States is a party to the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, which is directly related to the legal regime of the Law of the Sea Convention, even though we have not joined the underlying Convention. As a party to the Convention, we would be in a stronger position to persuade other nations to abide by the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and other modern international standards of fisheries management and thus advance our Nation’s interests in this field.

Leadership in Environmental Concerns. A fourth reason for the change in the American attitude toward the Convention was a new global attitude toward management of the environment. Part XII of the Convention deals extensively with the protection and preservation of the marine environment, covering a wide array of issues, from general principles to global and regional cooperation, technical assistance, monitoring and environmental assessment, and responsibility and liability.³¹ The inclusion of strong environmental protection measures in the Convention was an earlier and enduring goal of the United States. In the decade following its completion, the U.S., along with many other nations, became even more interested in preserving the environment, to the point that such concerns in many cases supplanted economic considerations.³² Given that Part XII creates an effective, if diffuse, international mechanism for controlling marine pollution and establishes a symbiotic relationship between the Convention and other issue-specific agreements, the Clinton administration decided that agreeing to the Convention would ensure a stable regime for environmental protection.³³

While these powers give us a great deal of control over our interests in both environmental protection and the productive use of our continental shelf, in themselves they are insufficient to protect the full range of either our environmental interests or our energy and other interests. To protect those interests, we need to influence the laws and practices of foreign countries. It is for this reason that the Convention establishes a floor of generally accepted international standards that every coastal state must apply. Among the American interests that this protects are the following:

• Our neighbors have the same exclusive rights over the continental shelf off their coasts as we have off ours. Pollution from their activities can easily affect our waters, our resources, and our shores. This became abundantly clear a number of years ago when a pollution incident on the Mexican continental shelf gave rise to extensive public concerns in Texas and other Gulf states that our waters and coastline would be polluted. As a party to the Convention, we will have increased credibility and leverage to protect ourselves from such incidents in a way that avoids any appearance that we are bullying our neighbors.
   
• While every coastal state has the right to impose higher standards on its continental shelf activities, and ours are among the strongest in the world, the oil and gas industry is a global enterprise that can achieve economic efficiencies from uniform global standards regarding equipment and operations. Those efficiencies can of course help to keep down the cost of energy and free up additional capital for investment. As a party to the Convention, we will have increased credibility and leverage to promote stronger and more efficient international standards and their general acceptance.
   
• We live in an era of instant global news. A serious pollution catastrophe on the continental shelf anywhere in the world is likely to be reported, and its consequences televised, throughout the globe. This can stimulate public demands in many countries for new restrictions on continental shelf development. To the extent that this means that we all continue to learn from each others’ mistakes, this is of course a good thing. But to the extent that public excitement can lead to hasty and ill-considered actions either in the United States or in other countries, the economic consequences can be adverse, and the result may be an unnecessary increase in the price of energy. As a party to the Convention, we will have increased credibility and leverage to ensure the emergence and enforcement of international standards that reduce the likelihood of such events.
   
• Our interest in the health of the oceans throughout the world is no mere abstraction. They comprise over two-thirds of our world, and are essential to our well-being and the overall ecological balance of the planet. Marine living resources from the far reaches of the globe supply us and the rest of the world with food, with sources of recreation, with valuable scientific knowledge, and with the promise of new and more effective medicines. We have neither an environmental nor an economic interest in a race to the bottom in pollution regulation in other parts of the world that destroys marine life. As a party to the Convention, we will have increased credibility and leverage to exercise the kind of balanced global leadership in protecting the oceans that is incumbent upon the leading maritime power in the world and that the American people expect.

This is but one example of the benefits of the approach taken by the Convention to environmental protection. There are many others. The provisions that successfully accommodate the interests of states with respect to freedoms and rights of navigation and their interests with respect to prevention of pollution are obviously of great importance. The maintenance over time of a reasonable balance responsive to both navigation and environmental interests would unquestionably be advanced by U.S. participation in the Convention.

The treaty champions the rights of the American people in the conservation of their offshore living marine resources, particularly fish. Ninety percent of the living marine resources are harvested within 200 miles of the coast. The convention confirms the validity of the United States Exclusive Economic Zone, proclaimed by President Reagan in 1983. The treaty's provisions relating to the conservation and management of living marine resources are consistent with U.S. law, policy, and practice. Its provisions on the conservation of high seas fishery resources are more critical today than they were a few years ago because of the dramatic overfishing that has occurred worldwide just in the past decade. The dispute settlement provisions of the convention as they relate to high seas fisheries will help us ensure that overfishing does not occur on the high seas adjacent to our 200-mile zone in a manner detrimental to the interests of our fishing industry.

The convention champions the rights of the American people to protect the marine mammals that inhabit the vast ocean space. Americans care about whales and giant sea turtles and other important sea creatures. Poll after poll confirms this interest, and the treaty sets up the mechanisms whereby the United States can work to respond to these uniquely international issues.