The interactions between Ocean and Climate Systems are difficult to envisage together legally, because existing frameworks are fragmented and complex to grasp. On the one hand, the international ocean law can be characterized as a comprehensive framework, erecting a global architecture. It consists of a broad range of sectoral and regional arrangements, within the unified legal framework of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (hereinafter UNCLOS)1. The “constitution for the oceans” (T.B. Koh, 1982) is the result of the codification process of the Law of the sea and the formation of new legal rules (e.g., the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) or the status of archipelagic States). It defines the rights and obligations of States conducting maritime activities (navigation, exploitation of biological and mineral resources, marine scientific research, etc.), according to a zonal division of seas and oceans into zones under national sovereignty or jurisdiction (internal waters, territorial sea and contiguous zone, EEZ, continental shelf) and, zones beyond the limits of national jurisdiction (High seas, the Area)2. Since it came into force on the 16th November 1994, more than ten years after its signature in Montego Bay (Jamaica), the International Community has shown a growing concern for many issues related to the uses of seas and oceans and the protection of the marine environment. The topics of major concern are the collapse of most fisheries stocks, the destruction of marine and coastal habitats and biodiversity loss, the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, land-based and marine pollution, and, in recent years, climate change impacts.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) shape the legal backbone of sea and climate law on the international level. Framework conventions mark the beginning of specific legal systems that are destined to evolve. The UNCLOS takes into account only in an incidental manner certain aspects affecting climate in relation to the ocean. Climate change creates new challenges for the Law of the Sea, which then must adapt to tackle its impacts and showcase the ocean’s “regulating“ role. Regulation of GHG emissions in maritime transport, ice-melt in the Arctic, or even sea-level rise has become the object of international discussions and calls for further legal development. To affirm that the ocean has been completely left out of international climate negotiations would be at very least imprecise. The ocean was inderectly mentioned at several occasions during debats and in international texts. These references are incomplete and the relative legal provisions suffer from a limited legal scope. The effects of scientific and political mobilization concerning the links between ocean and climate set conditions for a consolidation of the integration of the ocean in climate law. The inclusion of the term “ocean“ in the Paris Treaty, the IPCC special report on “Climate change and the oceans and the cryosphere”, or the existence of an ocean session at COP22 – where the implementation of the treaty will be discussed – all foretell a strengthening of the ocean in the climate regime.
COP21 marked the enshrinement of national contributions in international climate negotiations. The ocean, presented at COP21 as “the forgotten element”1 of international climate negotiations, has been put back on the negotiation table. As for all subjects, the ocean had to be fervently defended to access the international political agenda. What are intended nationally determined contributions and how do States prepare them? Today, how is the ocean taken into account by Mediterranean States in their national contributions?
Since the 1990s, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has used global level analyses of vulnerability to inform investment and action against the effects of climate change. Beyond the IPCC, the practice has been used widely to understand the vulnerability of coastal areas to a variety of hazards, including climate change. These analyses, however, have been driven by objectives that change from one assessment to the next, with very different conceptualisations of vulnerability. Over time these analyses have become increasingly data intensive and complex, drawing from an ever-expanding number of indicators. Such variations in objectives, conceptualisations and data have led to different and often contradictory rankings of priority areas for climate change action. The increased complexity makes it more difficult to disentangle the root causes of these different rankings and the degree to which climate change influences vulnerability rankings, compared to other factors such as local environment factors and the adaptive capacity of populations to deal with environmental change. If these global indicator analyses were deconstructed, climate decision-makers could use them as scoping studies rather than expect them to provide comprehensive and robust priorities for investment. Such scoping studies, if they are to be truly useful to climate decision-makers, need to be simplified and harmonised to isolate climate change specific drivers. They can help target the locations for more in-depth local level analyses and should be supplemented by global level analyses of costs of climate action including technical, social and economic factors.
Encompassing 95% of the planet’s habitable volume, the deep ocean plays a major role in climate regulation, and thus new pressures exerted on it and its components should be a major concern. The deep sea provides many ecosystem services, such as storing heat and anthropogenic carbon emitted into the atmosphere. These services are key to sequestrating CO2 and CH4 on longer time- scales, as well as in supporting nutrient cycling on which the entire foodweb (and so commercial activities such as fisheries) relies. Heat absorption and redistribution impacts human exploited- species ranges. Already absorbing many pollutants and waste, the deep ocean could also become a place for new activities such as mining. Setting up key mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change will require new knowledge, and implementation of a complete legal framework and management tools.