Fragmented Governance of Our One Global Ocean

Unfortunately, this most necessary ‘refocusing’ remains very much a work in progress. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (unclos) states in its Preamble that “problems of ocean space are closely interrelated and need to be addressed as a whole.”2 And yet paradoxically, the global governance regime is essentially sectoral in nature, based around management and regulatory stovepipes aimed largely at individual industries and activities with rules and regulations emanating from innumerable oversight entities. Much has been written about the failures of this sectoral approach to ocean governance.3