Policymaking on the high seas

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Weeds. I'm John Colen Hill. Today, we're going to talk about one of the most challenging international policies we may ever need to navigate. It's not our relationship with China. It's not the war between Russia and Ukraine. It's the ocean. Now I love the beach. I love the sand. I love the salty air. I love a cute swimsuit moment. And of course, I love the water. But a few years ago, I was at the beach with my parents and my mom and I were standing on the boardwalk looking out at the water. She turned to me and she said, you know, if you stare at the water long enough, you'll see something you don't want to see. There are creatures out there. See what makes you crazy. And look, a bit of caution when it comes to the ocean is never a bad thing. There are definitely creatures out there. But the sea also embodies, probably even more than the Wild West, a lawless and seemingly ungovernable territory. Look at me, sure. Look at me, sure. I'm the captain now. But an intergovernmental conference created by the United Nations hopes to change that. Earlier this year, the UN finalized the language of the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction treaty. Yeah, it's a mouthful. The aim of the treaty is to protect what's known as the high seas. The parts of the open ocean outside any single country's jurisdiction. It'll likely get finalized this summer and then UN member nations will have the opportunity to ratify it. The questions this raises about conservation and resources and international relations are as vast as the sea itself. And we wanted to bring clarity to those murky waters or get in the seaweeds, if you will. So I reached out to Vox Senior Environmental Reporter, Benji Jones. Benji covers biodiversity loss and he spends a lot of time thinking about and admiring the ocean and all its creatures. He began by telling me what's exactly out there. So there are many regions in the high seas that are particularly cool in my opinion. I spent some time learning about a handful of different high seas habitats. One of them that I find particularly cool is this place called the Lost City. It literally is like Atlantis. People describe it as an underwater metropolis because in this part of the ocean, which is in the middle of the Atlantic between Florida and Northern Africa, you have just an expanse of what are called hydrothermal fence. So in the ocean floor in this region, there are essentially hot springs that are spewing water that's been heated by volcanic activity and that water is really mineral rich. And so when this hot water comes out of the sea floor, it exudes minerals that then form these really tall structures that are in some cases nearly 200 feet tall. And it's home to all kinds of creatures that specialize in living in this environment. Because it's so mineral rich, you have mats of bacteria that are able to convert chemicals into energy. You have deep sea octopuses like the adorable Dumbo octopus. So it's just a really, really cool environment and a huge number of the species that live there are found nowhere else. Actually, more than half of the species here in the Lost City, maybe nowhere else on Earth. Can I also say historically octopuses scare me because of how intelligent they are? They're very, very smart, but the Dumbo octopus is so cute. They look like cartoons. I know. I'm just saying, oh, this is adorable. You don't scare me like your giant cousins do. And I think they have stubby or tentacles or at least looks like that in pictures. Yes, they're very, very cute. I'm a big octopus fan. There's another place in the high seas called the Sargasso Sea. And this is also just a really incredible habitat for wildlife. It's the only sea on Earth that has no land boundaries. It's bound instead by currents in the ocean. And it's named Sargasso because it's dominated by a kind of seaweed called Sargassum. The Sargassum is just kind of like floating in clumps and it creates these little micro environments for animals to live in. And it's described as like a nursery for a number of different creatures. And again, there's a really high level of endomism, meaning a lot of the species that are there are not found anywhere else. So that's what this sea treaty aims to protect. Can you tell us what this sea treaty is exactly? There are all these incredible habitats that are homes for wildlife that you can't find anywhere else, but they also support fisheries. So there is a fair amount of fishing in the high seas. So this is not just a wildlife story. It's also a human story. Seafood consumption is increasing around the world. It's a really important protein. And so the oceans are important for humans too. But yes, so this treaty, which has been agreed to by over 190 countries, is essentially the first tool or mechanism that the world has to conserve the high seas. Right now, only about 1% of the entire high seas is protected in any way. And some scholars would say it's actually less than 1% because the existing protections are not super stringent. And so what this treaty does is it creates a way to actually start to conserve this critically important habitat. So it's a really big deal just because so far nothing has existed to do this yet. So what exactly does the treaty lay out? Like what are the countries agreeing to? Okay, so the treaty is more technically called the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, BBNJ, which I know is a mouthful of. The BBNJ, the high seas treaty has a few main objectives. The one that I think gets the most attention and will potentially be the most important is just this new approach to establish protected areas or parks in the high seas. Another key part of this treaty has to do with environmental impact assessments. So it basically states that if a country or its companies are going to impact the high seas in any way, so if they're doing deep sea mining or commercial fishing in such a way that could harm resources in the high seas, they have to complete an assessment that measures what kinds of problems that might create, what the impact is actually going to be. So it's basically like a review, an environmental review of activities and that's really important because it creates this level of accountability so that we know that activities are not going to necessarily be incredibly harmful and different countries can weigh in and respond to what that assessment shows. And then another aspect of this, which is pretty technical, has to do with genetic resources, marine genetic resources. Any natural environment on earth, whether it's a forest or coral reef or a habitat in the high seas is home to lots of different species, many of which contain potential cures for illnesses or genes that help us formulate drugs. So part of this treaty is to say, okay, if a company finds a species that has some benefit for drug development, let's say, and then ends up making a ton of money in developing that drug, the benefits, the monetary benefits from that drug, and the health benefits would be shared equally or shared at least to some extent among all members of this treaty. And so there's this whole part of the treaty about sharing genetic resources. And actually, I was just looking into some of the drugs that have been developed for marine resources and remdesivir, the antiviral COVID drug was actually developed from a marine sponge. And so this is actually a very relevant part of the agreement, this sharing of resources, because there are resources that come from the marine environment. So those are three of the kind of key parts of this treaty. Anyone who watches international policy closely knows that it can be very difficult to get people all on one accord and agree to something. What were the issues that were difficult to come to agreement on regarding this treaty? Because I mean, it took nearly two decades to make happen. What have the sticking points been? It's been nearly 20 years in the making. The actual negotiations were like five years, but still it's a huge amount of time. And I will say, it's not totally surprising that it has taken this long. These agreements are totally nuts. It is a bunch of different countries all trying to agree on individual words, phrases. It's like an exercise in pettentry to the extreme. And like literally, if you're in some of these rooms during the negotiations, you'll have text on screen. Imagine like 190 countries in the same Google Doc, like something like that. It's just totally nuts. And you can understand why it's important that everybody has a seat at the table because we're talking about a legally binding agreement. The treaty is legally binding and it is a big ocean habitat that a lot of countries depend on. So it makes sense that the stakes are really high. I think in this case, it took so long because these processes take long. Like that is just one part of it. COVID disrupted the negotiations as well in terms of the timeline. And then there were several sticking points to your question. I think one thing that you see often in environmental agreements is this kind of general, this is a big generalization, but there is this divide between Northern wealthier nations, like the quote, global North and the global South where there are poor countries. And the divide creates tensions around a number of different issues. One of them is related to money. So often you'll see groups of nations in poorer regions that have historically contributed very little to the problems that the high seas are facing, asking the wealthier countries to chip in more money to any kind of efforts to conserve the high seas. So if for example, some of the poor nations like island states need to monitor their impacts on the high seas, monitoring takes money. And where is that money going to come from? Some of these poor nations want wealthier nations to give that money into a fund that will then be able to help capacity and financing of some of these activities under the treaty. Compared to that is tension around what I mentioned before, which is just the genetic resources. So often it's the wealthier countries that are exploring the high seas that are finding drugs that they can then market and sell based on resources in the high seas. And so you often see tension around the North South divide about, okay, let's make sure that we're going to share those resources that often are concentrated in the Northern wealthier countries equally among all the treaty members. So that's another big tension that came out during these agreements and ultimately stalled the development of the final treaty, which is not yet ratified, I should say. So you mentioned that this treaty is not ratified yet. And as of now, over 190 countries have signed on and the United States is not one of them. How is the US showing up in all of this? So what happens next is that the UN will clean up the text, it will translate the text, and then it needs to formally adopt the text. So the UN has first has to adopt the text of the treaty that will likely happen this summer. And then countries will have to ratify the treaty in their own governments. And once 60 member states ratify the treaty, then it will enter into force. So we are still a little bit far from like full treaty in existence. But you are totally right that there is this question of whether the US will be one of the countries that ratifies it, which would give it a seat at the table in implementation of the treaty. Conservative lawmakers tend to have an aversion to global treaties because they feel that it infringes on American sovereignty and potentially is muffling corporations or limiting corporations ability to make money in some way. And so I think there is a question of whether the treaty will be ratified in the US. And there was this great story in the Washington Post about how a lot of senators don't even really know what this treaty is after it was agreed to. So I think like in general, this is not a top priority for lawmakers and maybe more so for conservative lawmakers. Biodiversity is in the name of this treaty. But is this about biodiversity or is it more about resources and industry? Because there's a lot going on. I mean, there is the biodiversity protections, but you know, there's fishing rights. There's the genetic material. There's mining like, and you know, I really, I try, I don't know, we're journalists so inherent skepticism. But part of me is thinks, okay, is this, is this really about a bottom line at the end of the day? I think it's both. I mean, I think the reason that this exists is because there is so much commercial interest for the high seas to your point. Like the impacts of mining are a growing concern. There's been fishing in the high seas for a long time. So I think this treaty in part has come out because people are concerned that all these commercial activities are degrading the high seas environment and there needs to be some oversight in place to make sure that these activities are not continuing to destroy habitats out here. And it's kind of out of sight out of mind because no one is patrolling the high seas every day. And so it's that just makes an agreement like this even more important. So yes, commercial interest coming to play only in that I think they are kind of underscoring the importance of this. All right, Benji Jones. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. So those are the basics of the BB&J. After the break, we drift even further out to sea with an expert in marine affairs and international relations. So it's, I mean, it's the most exciting year since maybe 1967 for politics around the international seabed. Support for this episode comes from Vero. It's spring and that means it is time to get all of your cutest spring outfits off. The only problem is everyone has the exact same idea as you, which means overcrowded bars, endless concert lines and surging Uber prices just to get to the bar of your choice. Why not just show off that beautiful attire with your friends and family right in your own backyard? 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You can cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash weeds. It's the weeds. I'm John Pullenhill. We've been talking about the biodiversity beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty. The treaty aims to protect parts of the ocean beyond individual countries' control by filling a gap in the current rules and regulations governing the oceans, many of which were adopted decades ago. For more on this history, I made a call. I'm Beth Mendenhall. I'm an assistant professor going on Associate Professor at the University of Rhode Island. I'm in the Department of Marine Affairs, but I'm a political scientist. My PhD is in international relations. There's literally no better set of qualifications for this. It's like she was born for this conversation. Well, first I want to say that everything I'm about to describe was settled in the 1970s and early 1980s in this United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or Unclose. It creates all the basic rules for who can do what and what parts of the ocean. The basic rule is that you always start from the coastline. They call it the baseline, the starting point for making ocean clamps. When you're talking about the water column or the sea surface, like the web parts of the ocean, there's a couple of different zones that you claim from the baseline. There's a 12 nautical mile territorial sea, then there's a contiguous zone for another 12 miles after that. The big one is the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. And that gives coastal countries exclusive sovereign rights over living resources like fish, gives them the exclusive right to build structures like offshore oil rigs or wind turbines. It gives them control over scientific research. It gives them a lot of particular rights over resources and activities. But because this is the ocean we're talking about, it's not land, it's not divided the same way you can't build walls. In those coastal zones, you still have to allow for foreign ships to navigate through. And so there's a lot of rights of access when it comes to shipping and also laying submarine cables for telecommunications purposes. So basically the further you get from the coastline, the fewer rights the coastal country has, but the coastal country claims these zones based on the coastline, the coastline, and they have rights out to 200 nautical miles when it comes to the sea service in the water column. The rules are different for the sea bed, but it's the same basic idea starting from the baseline. Everyone gets 200 nautical miles of the sea floor. But if you have a physical continental shelf that extends beyond that, so these are sort of shallow areas of the ocean that extend from the continental land itself, then you can make a claim that you deserve more ocean space, that you should have rights over more of the sea floor. A lot of countries have made claims further out beyond 200 nautical miles, and we're waiting for most of those claims to be resolved by this committee of scientists that we created in the 1990s. That sounds like it can get so messy. I mean, borders are already messy. We see so many conflicts regarding it. I wonder, how is this settled in the ocean? I mean, it's literally a different landscape. Yeah, I mean, what I described is messy in itself, like where is the low water line that you start from, and what constitutes a physical continental shelf that allows you to make this extended claim. But it's even messier when you talk about places like the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, where coastal countries are clustered pretty close to one another. So you might have two countries that are 300 nautical miles apart, and they're each making 200 nautical mile claims, so you got to draw a border between them. In that scenario, it seems easy. You can just choose the halfway point, but it gets really complicated really fast when you talk about different shapes of coastlines, and maybe there's a little island here, or maybe there's a history of one country doing a lot of fishing in one area. So countries basically have to work it out with one another, but that law of the sea convention I mentioned, the Constitution for the oceans, one of the ways it's really cool and really unique among international legal agreements is it requires you to settle your disputes in, if not via negotiation, you can go to two different courts, or you can choose an arbitrator. You can set up an arbitral tribunal to resolve the dispute. That being said, there are exceptions for that dispute settlement, and maritime boundaries are one of them, so are military activities. Anything the UN Security Council puts its hands on is excluded from that. And so there are a lot of unresolved maritime boundaries. Sometimes countries like an unresolved border because it allows them to do what they want. They don't want to restrict activities based on a settled border. And sometimes they like it for domestic political purposes. It can be useful to have the public focused on a particular dispute if you're trying to get reelected, for example. So depending on the countries, depending on the region, the factors are different. But bottom line, there are a lot of areas in the ocean where it's unclear who owns or controls or has jurisdiction over which part. I definitely understand why some countries would not necessarily want to negotiate those boundaries, especially, you know, maybe fishermen in two countries, they're both able to fish in the same area and they don't have conflict. And it's like, okay, cool, it works. But there are other resources involved here, really valuable ones. Can you talk about those and who gets to benefit from them? Yes, so there's a lot of really valuable resources in the ocean, but the two that have, I guess, been on people's minds for the longest time, definitely since the 20th century, catching a lot of fish, but also minerals. And a lot of it is like oil and gas drilling in your coastal areas, but there's also all these sea floor minerals out in the middle of the ocean. And when it comes to fish, a disputed area might benefit fishers because they kind of have plausible deniability, they can say, well, I thought this was the area where we could catch fish. But when it comes to oil and gas drilling or sea bed mining, the resources are in one place. And so companies that are going to invest in the technology to access those resources, they need legal certainty. You know, they need to know if we put in $5 million to build this specialized drill to access this resource that we're going to be able to legally claim that resource. So there's more of an incentive to resolve disputed claims when it comes to sea bed resources. But basically that law of the sea convention in the 1970s and 80s created a set of rules for doing mining in the areas beyond national jurisdictions called the area, unfortunately, it's a very vague name. I think of like a capital A and then like the little TM trademark after it. Yeah, exactly. Whenever I teach about this, I say it's called the area, but we can call it the international sea bed because that kind of captures the idea of what it is. Anyway, if you want to do sea bed mining out there, you have to go through this intergovernmental organization, the International Seabed Authority. And the reason is that the sea floor in the middle of the ocean we decided was the common heritage of all humans. It belongs to all of us. We should all control it and we should all benefit from it. And so if you want to do sea bed mining in that part of the ocean, you have to do it through this international cooperative forum. And when the profits start coming in, you will have to give some of those profits to the sea bed authority, which will redistribute them to the international community. And as a side note, that's the main reason why the United States has not agreed to participate in the law of the sea convention. We haven't ratified it because the Reagan administration and many Republicans since Reagan really opposed that part of the agreement on sea bed mining. I don't even know if challenges is the right word, but one of the challenges I have when it comes to the UN is, you know, how are things enforced? What do you do other than write a sternly written resolution condemning actions? How is this international maritime law enforced? Well, it depends on which part of the ocean you're talking about and who is violating the rule. In the middle of the ocean and the high seas and also in the area, the international sea bed, it's almost exclusively flag state jurisdiction is what they call it. So every ship has to register in a country and you call that flagging in that country. And that country exercises jurisdiction and control over that ship when it's in international common space, like the high seas. So it's good in the sense that the high seas is not a lawless place. Every ship carries a set of laws, essentially with it. And there is one country that is responsible for enforcing the laws on that ship. But it's a bad thing because the ocean is very vast and some countries have low capacity and low motivation to actually enforce the rules. And so this is a larger topic than just the high seas treaty or over fishing or it really applies to everything you're interested in the ocean. But there's this phenomenon called flags of convenience where essentially ships choose to register in countries that have weak laws and low capacity and low will to enforce the laws. And there's no real rule preventing them from registering where they want as long as the country agrees to grant that flag, to accept that registration, then that's the country that has jurisdiction over that ship. So if you get to the coastal zone, if you get closer to countries, coastlines, they have more authority to do more enforcement. Even that is limited, especially if you get into a port. The port is essentially like land territory, it was full territory of that country. So that country has the ability to exercise more jurisdiction. But out in the middle of the ocean, it's just the country that you flag in. There's some minor exceptions to that, but that covers almost every situation. Next, we continue our look at ocean policy with Beth Mindenhall and find out why maybe this shouldn't be called the high seas treaty after all. You're married, but you're not in love. And I'm in love with you. And that is what Microsoft's AI power chatbot recently wrote to the New York Times tech columnist Kevin Russe. It made Kevin feel torn. One part of me is kind of my rational reporter brain part. And that part goes, what I am talking to you here is not some kind of mystical, sentient alien intelligence. It is a computer. But then there's this other part of me that just felt like amazed and thrilled and a little bit scared, maybe more than a little bit scared. Because imagine the consequences of tech that's convincingly intelligent, even to a tech reporter. I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Recode Media. In the final episode of our special series on AI, we look at the giant ambitions and enormous concerns people have about the very same tech. Subscribe to Recode Media to listen now. Hey there, I'm Josh Mutio, host of The Pitch, where each week we hear a hopeful entrepreneur pitch their business to a panel of investors who decide whether or not to fund them. You'll learn what a promising business model really looks like and what pitfalls and risks new businesses face. The reason you end up with bad oceans is because there's a nugget of a good idea there and everybody else screws it up. If anyone can make a work at you. This season you'll hear pitches on everything from fireproof EV batteries to a Slack integration for making the workplace more empathetic. We'll even go meta with a company that uses AI to create a better pitch to investors. It's real entrepreneurs pitching real tech investors for real money. Follow The Pitch for our best season yet. New episodes out every Wednesday. We're back. Talking with University of Rhode Island's Beth Mendenhall about ocean policy and what's known as the high seas treaty. Except Beth doesn't exactly love that characterization. Calling it the high seas treaty is half right because the areas beyond national jurisdiction that it applies to are the high seas and the area. The area being the international seabed. It's inaccurate but it's also misleading in a way that I think can be harmful because coming out of the law of the sea convention in the 70s and 80s, the main principle behind the high seas is the idea of freedom of the seas that everyone should be able to access and use what's out there. But the principle that underlines the area is the common heritage of humankind. The idea that everyone owns and everyone should benefit from the resources on the international seabed. It's a principle that incorporates ideas of equity and justice. When the treaty was being negotiated, a lot of countries were saying, it's freedom of the seas, it's freedom of the seas. All these resources that we're talking about, especially genetic resources from interesting creatures in the deep ocean, it was really easy to say, well, the high seas treaty is about the high seas and so freedom of the seas. But that principle of common heritage, a lot of countries argued, especially developing countries, should apply to genetic resources on the seabed. When you call it the high seas treaty, it really under-enthesizes the relevance of this other really important governance principle of common heritage. My perception of where the high seas treaty name came from is non-governmental organizations attending the negotiations as observers that are there to represent environmental interests, community interests, scientific interests, they're representing stakeholders that are not there necessarily to speak for themselves. So the participation of these non-governmental organizations is a really good thing. I mean, they coordinated many of them in this network called the High Seas Alliance. I started to hear them call it the high seas treaty first. And this is just one person's perception. So I could be wrong. But I think it was kind of about public relations and marketing and getting more popular attention to the treaty. And so there was a reason behind naming it the high seas treaty. But I thought it was especially helpful, unhelpful rather, before the negotiations concluded because this debate over the applicability of common heritage versus freedom of the seas was an active debate right up until the very last moment when the treaty was finalized. And I felt like calling it the high seas treaty was unintentionally taking aside in that debate. So all of this is being talked about in the same breath as the UN 30 by 30 goal. And that's this goal to protect 30% of the land and sea by 2030. And the US has signed on to that. How realistic is that goal? It is 2023. We are almost halfway done with 2023. Yeah, well, of course the US signed on to it, so to speak, because it's just a goal. It's just like a voluntary guideline. You know, it's not a difficult thing to say, yes, we agree with that. Let's all do that. Whether or not those commitments actually lead to 30% protection of different planetary spaces by 2030. It's on the concerted effort of a lot of different actors, you know, not just United States federal government, but as far as is it realistic in the areas beyond national jurisdiction that this new treaty covers, it's going to be close if we get there. And if I had to put money on it, I would say we will not get there by 2030. And the reason is there's so much more to do before we actually get marine protected areas beyond national jurisdiction. The treaty has to be adopted. Enough countries have to ratify. It's 60 of them do. After that, it's a year and then the conference of parties meets. And then they have to come up with their rules of procedure and then they have to form the various institutions in the treaty, like this scientific and technical body. And then countries have to put together and submit proposals for protected areas that then go through a review process and a consultation process and then they're revised. And then the conference of parties, all the countries that have ratified the treaty, they have to vote in favor of that proposal. And so it's really likely that that could be, you know, five, ten years before we get to that phase in this treaty. It could happen faster if countries really focus, if they really prioritize ratifying this agreement and getting other countries to ratify it. But you know, the history of international politics and especially the recent history around global environmental issues doesn't make me very optimistic that this treaty will achieve that goal in the areas beyond national jurisdiction. But the goal could be met within jurisdictions, whether it's on land or in coastal areas that coastal countries claim, you know, like the exclusive economic zone. But again, that's going to take a lot of focus and pressure. And that's one reason why I've been a little concerned about the reaction I've seen on social media and in popular media around this new treaty. Yeah, everyone is very excited about this. What I even saw in some, what I would consider reputable news outlets saying that this treaty means that 30% of the areas of the ocean beyond national jurisdiction will be protected by 2030. And it's a mechanism to achieving that goal, but it doesn't mean that it's guaranteed that we'll get there. And like a lot has to happen if this treaty is going to get us to the 30 by 30 goal. I think people want something to celebrate. They want a victory and they want hope. And so, you know, we just need to be a little bit more step back and ask ourselves, what did this really accomplish? And what do we need to do next to achieve our big goals around conservation? I'm thinking of these resources and historically, there's a lot of countries that have been exploited that don't get their share of things or, you know, have seen their own resources depleted and other countries benefit greatly from them. I mean, that is essentially colonialism. And this does feel different because, you know, it literally is no man's land or I guess, you know, no man's sea. But I'm wondering how that all shakes out. Like, do those resources get distributed, like redistributed to how do you look at equity when it comes to this? And, you know, should equity be a factor when it comes to these capitalistic endeavors? It's, I mean, that's really not how the free market operates. Yeah, there's so much to say about colonialism and the law of the sea. So I'll try to keep it. Well, first let me say that this idea of sharing the benefits of ocean resources legally, it only applies to the international seabed and the resources therein, which is really mineral resources. The developing countries in the 1970s really pushed for this. It was part of their broader agenda to create a new international economic order. And a lot of these countries, developing countries in this coalition, working together, they were newly independent former colonies. And so they had this explicit motivation of colonialism, we're done with it. We don't want to see new forms of colonialism. We need to recreate international law so that it's not a system that's rigged against us so that it does benefit us. It is more equitable. And so the whole idea of claiming an exclusive economic zone off your coastline, people tell different stories about where that came from. But ultimately it came through African developing states. Kenny was actually the one that drafted the initial paper and brought it to the law of the sea negotiations and said, look, this is a way for us to ensure that coastal developing countries like African countries can control the resources near their coastline. They were really afraid of former colonial powers or current colonial powers that had more advanced technology, more money to spend, sending their boats over to the coastal areas of developing countries and just taking all the resources. So that was an initial motivation for this system in the first place. But when you ask yourself, okay, well, who benefited the most from this new system, and it was new in the 70s and 80s of claiming big coastal zones just because you own land territory, like you own the land or you have sovereignty over the land, then you get to claim the ocean. Well, if you look at a map of the Pacific, you'll notice like, oh, the United States has a lot of islands out there. France has some islands. Great Britain has some islands there and also in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. Like there are still colonial territories controlled. I kind of don't want to say owned by colonial powers and they're getting major ocean resources and ocean space because of that. And so when the United States cheer leads about all the marine protected areas we've created, the follow up question is, oh, well, where are they? Well, they're in our Pacific territories. So colonialism is still very relevant to the law of the state explains a lot of the international laws we got. It also kind of continues to explain some of the unevenness and access to the ocean control over the ocean. You do also have this phenomenon of long distance fishing where particular countries sponsor through subsidies, industrial fishing vessels that travel really far away and they might be accessing fish in the high seas in the middle of the ocean, but sometimes they're accessing fish in the coastal zone of say West African countries or Pacific small island countries. And sometimes they're paying for a license or a fee. Sometimes they're bribing officials. Sometimes they're fishing just outside the border, but they ultimately are accessing those resources off developing country coastlines and bringing them back to develop more advanced countries. So there are kind of still neo colonial dynamics in the law of the sea. I would say that that framework of thinking about international interactions of colonialism is still very relevant. What does it say about international relations and our current geopolitics? This is not happening in a vacuum. It's just not the sea happening. There's a whole lot going on here. A lot of big countries really don't have much appetite for international agreements that are formal and mandatory and that have accountability mechanisms where there might be costs if you don't meet the rules, more than just reputational costs, but like actual costs, like there's some kind of penalty. It's just not really been a trend that major countries have embraced in the last decade or two. And of course you have major conflicts that kind of spill into these negotiations, like between the US and China and US and Russia and the European Union might have some tension with developing countries that are their former colonies. Like all of international politics comes into play when you're talking, especially about an area like the ocean where there's lots of shared international space. I do think we need international cooperative action and I lean towards more formal treaties that are more like we call it hard law, that do have dispute settlement requirements and there are costs if you violate the rules, but it's going to take political mobilization. People are going to have to pay attention and pressure their governments to sign on to the cooperative agreements, ratify treaties. And in the United States, especially, we used to be leaders in international environmental lawmaking. And when I teach my students about that, that the Nixon administration was really involved in international lawmaking to protect the marine environment. You can see them being crestfallen, like well, why can't we have that now? Why can't we be a leader in this area again? And so I'm sort of hopeful that this emerging generation of young adults might put the pressure on because we need pressure. Beth Mindenhall, thank you so much for joining us on the weeds. Thank you. That's all for us today. Thank you to Benji Jones and Beth Mindenhall for joining me. Our producer is Sophie Lalonde. Chris Niella engineered this episode. It was fact checked by a nook-dous-oh, Adeowats and Caitlin Pinsie-Moogh. Our editorial director is AMHALL, and I'm your host, John Colan Hill. Also, we have an email address. Send us your questions or any other policy issues on your mind. Or, I don't know, use a to scream into the void. It's weedsatvox.com. The weeds is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. What's your favorite seed creature? Easy answer, the Baskin Shark. It's the second biggest shark. It's a filter feeder. Oh my god, its mouth is so big. I know. It doesn't seem like you could get stuck inside. But it's not a scary shark because it's a filter feeder and its mouth is wide open in like a big circular shape because it's just trying to get as much of that plankton through its gills as it can to feed. I'm not a marine biologist, so I don't quote me for accuracy of the biology of this shark. But I love it because its lifestyle is just swimming near the sea surface where the sun is shining, mouth open wide, just trying to get the most it can out of life. Oh my gosh. This so, it looks like it goes home. Yeah, it does so. It just wins with its mouth open. And sometimes you can find them alone, but a lot of times they aggregate and there'll be hundreds of them together. Oh, they have friends. Yeah, and they call it a cosmopolitan migratory species. It's cosmopolitan because you can find it in a lot of different places around the planet. In fact, it's supposed to be off the coast here in Rhode Island. I have yet to see one, but that would be the best thing in the world. Oh, I hope you get to see one. I really do.