Chapter 1
Introduction: Setting the Stage
1.1 Factual Background and Theoretical Framework
The world ocean is a giant of nature, occupying more than 70% of the Earth, adored
and feared by countless civilizations. It is home to a multitude of marine ecosystems,
each responsible for performing different ecosystem services, such as those of
provisioning protein-rich food and valuable sea-lanes; supporting the production
of biomass from plankton, indispensable for balancing the marine food cycle; and
regulating the planet’s temperature, the absorption of carbon dioxide, as well as
regulating other biological, chemical, and physical processes which take place in the
oceans and benefit human well-being. It also offers cultural services which benefit all
peoples, such as tourism and the locus for ancestral traditions and rituals associated
with the oceans.
Yet, humankind has increasingly looked at the oceans as an apparently inexhaustible source of marine goods indispensable to today’s capitalistic world-system.
Decades of aggressive anthropogenic interference, motivated by the hunt for food,
energy, and swift navigational operations have set the world ocean under a multitude
of stresses and risks. Nobody can deny the fact that a changing climate and the
sea-level rise have been leading to drastic changes in the world’s coasts, where
approximately 2.8 billion people currently live.
1 Ocean acidification, a phenomenon
still under-investigated and under-regulated, but known to exist, has caused devastating impacts on marine habitats such as coral reefs worldwide. Intense urban
occupation of coastal areas has resulted in a high level of use and severe pollution
of coastal waters, as 13 of the world’s 20 megacities with a population above
10 million are located at the shoreside.
Given that those problems are by no means fresh, and in order not to fall into
repetition, it suffices to refer à vol d’oiseau to other environmental strains the ocean
1 World Ocean Report (2017).
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
V. Alencar Mayer Feitosa Ventura, Environmental Jurisdiction in the Law of the Sea,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50543-1_1
1
Introduction: Setting the Stage
1.1 Factual Background and Theoretical Framework
The world ocean is a giant of nature, occupying more than 70% of the Earth, adored
and feared by countless civilizations. It is home to a multitude of marine ecosystems,
each responsible for performing different ecosystem services, such as those of
provisioning protein-rich food and valuable sea-lanes; supporting the production
of biomass from plankton, indispensable for balancing the marine food cycle; and
regulating the planet’s temperature, the absorption of carbon dioxide, as well as
regulating other biological, chemical, and physical processes which take place in the
oceans and benefit human well-being. It also offers cultural services which benefit all
peoples, such as tourism and the locus for ancestral traditions and rituals associated
with the oceans.
Yet, humankind has increasingly looked at the oceans as an apparently inexhaustible source of marine goods indispensable to today’s capitalistic world-system.
Decades of aggressive anthropogenic interference, motivated by the hunt for food,
energy, and swift navigational operations have set the world ocean under a multitude
of stresses and risks. Nobody can deny the fact that a changing climate and the
sea-level rise have been leading to drastic changes in the world’s coasts, where
approximately 2.8 billion people currently live.
1 Ocean acidification, a phenomenon
still under-investigated and under-regulated, but known to exist, has caused devastating impacts on marine habitats such as coral reefs worldwide. Intense urban
occupation of coastal areas has resulted in a high level of use and severe pollution
of coastal waters, as 13 of the world’s 20 megacities with a population above
10 million are located at the shoreside.
Given that those problems are by no means fresh, and in order not to fall into
repetition, it suffices to refer à vol d’oiseau to other environmental strains the ocean
1 World Ocean Report (2017).
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
V. Alencar Mayer Feitosa Ventura, Environmental Jurisdiction in the Law of the Sea,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50543-1_1
1