The Common Heritage of Mankind: Expanding the Oceanic Circle

Elisabeth Mann Borgese became known as the ‘Mother of the Oceans’. This title embraced both her deep love and respect for the oceans and her enormous contribution to oceans governance, including development of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (unclos).2 In this task, she worked closely with her friend and colleague, Arvid Pardo, former Maltese ambassador to the United Nations (UN). Appropriately, his contributions to the international law of the sea earned him the title: ‘Father of the law of the sea’. From 1967 onwards, they worked as a team advocating for adoption of the ethical and legal concept ‘common heritage of mankind’ (chm) in unclos. Central to their work was a shared understanding of the oceans as a complex integrated ecological system, sometimes expressed as the ‘whole of ocean space’ or the ‘marine environment’. Their objective was to ensure that ocean’s plenitude continued to sustain present and future generations and that its uses contributed to peace, security, and the equitable development of peoples. To achieve this, a new legal principle was required; one which claimed all ocean space as a commons (belonging to all humankind), and placed it under an