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Wednesday, June 28, 2023

The postwar ocean frontier and its legacy for law of the sea

Just out in Environment and History: "Wild Blue: The Post-World War Two Ocean Frontier and its Legacy for Law of the Sea" by Helen Rozwadowski. The abstract:

The post-1945 ocean came to be viewed through the cultural prism of 'frontier', denoting both a bonanza of resources and also lawlessness that impeded secure investment in their exploitation. After Arvid Pardo inserted the cultural representation of ocean frontier into law of the sea discussions with his 1967 proposal of the ocean as the Common Heritage of (Hu)Mankind, the prospect of using hitherto unexploited ocean resources to equalise an unequal world was widely, if not universally, embraced. While many commentators deny the power of the ocean frontier representation, this paper argues that, even as environmental concerns about pollution and declining resources aligned with worries about global overpopulation, the ocean continued, during the protracted negotiations of the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea beginning in 1973, to be viewed as full of resources. The historical context of decolonisation and Garrett Hardin's 1968 Tragedy of the Commons argument reframed the ocean into a site for competition over resources.

Arvid Pardo monument at the University of Malta (Dans)

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