| Summary: | Marine areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) are increasingly coming under threat from anthropogenic activities, such as pollution and overfishing, as well as potential impacts from new and emerging technologies, such as marine geoengineering and deep seabed mining. New technological advances, such as robotics, imaging, and structural engineering greatly improve access to the deep ocean. The emergence of new deep seabed mining technologies has the potential to provide access to hydrocarbon energy sources and mineral resources previously unattainable and uneconomical to recover. Climate change is increasingly having an impact on the oceans and marine species through impacts such as ocean warming, acidification, species range shift and other ecosystem-altering processes. Marine protected areas (MPAs) are one type of area-based management tool that can be used to protect and conserve ocean health and sustainably manage marine resource use. The ABNJ amount to nearly half of the Earth’s surface, comprising 64 per cent of the ocean’s surface and containing 90 per cent of its total biomass. However, only 13 MPAs have been designated in ABNJ (MPABNJ) covering a mere 1.18 per cent, despite continuing global targets and initiatives to increase the global coverage of MPAs. These MPABNJs have been established under two regional legal regimes; the 1980 Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CAMLR Convention) implemented by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), and the 1992 Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention) implemented by the OSPAR Commission. The objective of this research is to assess the effectiveness of the CCAMLR and OSPAR regimes in establishing and implementing MPABNJs. This research undertakes a comparative analysis of the case studies using a mixed-methods approach of qualitative and semi-quantitative analysis. This research project employs a mixed-methods approach, using ...
|
|---|