Needed: A real Constitution for the Oceans!

There is nothing as relaxing to me as the sound of waves. (Real waves – not New Age CDs with wave sounds, mind you). But when I stand by the oceans these days, I can't relax entirely. I cannot but think of the wild west exploitation "out there" that is destroying the livelihoods of small-scale fisherpeople, fish stocks and global biodiversity.

Thirty years ago 119 governments came together in an attempt to start end this destruction. In Jamaica they agreed what many called a "constitution for the oceans" – the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). To this day, as David Milliband argued this week, "UNCLOS is a symbol of global cooperation, compromise, and international law... But UNCLOS will need to evolve if it is to meet twenty-first-century challenges."

The oceans constitution covers both the rights and responsibilities of States operating on the high seas - the global commons that cover over half the Earth's surface. Looking back over the past 30 years, however, governments have succeeded in exercising their right to exploit the ocean but have not taking responsibility to protect it. Specific rules have been put in place under UNCLOS for governments and corporations to enable fishing, drilling and mining, but not to deliver conservation. In particular, there is still no agreed mechanism to create Sanctuaries at Sea - putting areas off limits to exploitation – for the High Seas or to apply environmental impact assessments to ensure activities do not do damage.

Though the number of countries supporting UNCLOS has risen to 164, the gaps in ocean protection today remain shockingly large. The percentage of high seas areas that are protected is pitiful – remaining stuck at below 1%.  Meanwhile, advances in technology have enabled humans to reach ever more distant and deeper waters. Areas that were once unreachable and acted as de facto Sacturies at Sea (marine reserves) are now starting to be explored and exploited.

The melting of the ice in the Arctic, for example, has seen oil firms and finishing fleets moving in, cynically abusing the devastating impacts of climate change as a business opportunity. Corporate interest in deep seabed mining, once the subject of science fiction, is also becoming a reality. In the last few years, the number of exploration licenses issued have increased significantly.

Instead of continuing this plunder, now is the time to evolve the constitution of the sea. Governments need to finally put in place globally agreed rules for protecting the High Seas. The good news is, that many governments are already calling for an agreement to end the wild west exploitation of the High Seas (through an UNCLOS implementing agreement). Brazil, Mexico, India, the European Union and South Africa are some of the champions of bringing UNCLOS into the 21^stcentury. Indeed, at the Rio+20 Conference this summer, the vast majority of governments wanted to launch negotiations for the UNCLOS agreement required. They were blocked by an unholy alliance of United States, Venezuela, Russia and Canada who selfishly put their fishing, mining and fossil fuel industry interests first. What they could not prevent, however, was Rio+20 agreeing a deadline for a decision to be taken by 2014. Some, encouragingly, don't want to wait that long. The French Minister of Environment, Delphine Batho, for example recently urged governments to launch negotiations for protecting the High Seas in 2013 already.  That's the right way to celebrate 30 years of the constitution of the Seas. Now is the time to make UNCLOS truly count for the Oceans.

Listening to the waves as I walk along the Pacific in Hong Kong, I am angered by 30 years of the constitution of the sea not having been enough to allow me to enjoy the relaxing force of this truly stunning phenomenon of nature. Today, to me, the sound of the waves is really a call for action.

Absurdity, urgency and the battle for our future

My head is in Doha, but my body is not. My inbox is overflowing even more than usual, as rumors picked up in the vast corridors of the Qatar Convention Centre are spread around electronically. The acronyms alone make it easy to make fun of the global climate negotiations. Sitting at my desk it´s hard not to smile at questions such as “what happened on ADP?” or “who has the KP non-papers on eligibility”? And no, that´s not about getting married….

If I were in Doha, these are the questions I would be asking. I would be part of what The Economist has quite aptly termed the UNFCCC “theatre of the absurd”. In the evening I would lament with colleagues that the Doha theatre is failing to alter the disastrous play that is our business-as-usual future. Some old hands would recount how they used to think, that the negotiations would get less absurd once the urgency of climate action was more widely accepted. Instead, today, one of the most disturbing absurdities of all is how the very leaders who are responsible for the crisis come to places like Doha to warn of the fossil-fuelled future we face in the starkest terms. When even the World Bank President fails to “shock the world into action” by pointing out just how unattractive a much warmer world will be, you got to wonder whether governments will ever get real. Certainly, I have to accept, the bits of absurd theatre I together with others have engaged in at climate meetings over the years – such as the “wake up call for the climate” pictured here (from 2008) - didn´t quite succeed in changing the power dynamics just yet …

Power. That is indeed the reason for the absurd situation we face. Too much of it, wielded - with brute grim reaper force - by the wrong people. If our governments were acting on behalf of their citizens we would not be watching them play childish “I won´t if you won´t” and “I will, but only after you” games with our future. Post Hurricane Sandy, even the vast majority of Americans back climate action. The fossil fuel industry, however, has captured too many governments in North and South. On Capitol Hill just like in Caracas, Brasilia or New Delhi oil, coal and gas still rule, not the people. There are victories – Petrobras is forced to abandon deep sea drilling in New Zealand; old coal-fired power stations in the US are being decommissioned and new ones stopped by an unprecedented alliance of grassroots groups, federal regulators and investors who no longer believe the lie that “coal is cheap”. But at international negotiations, government positions illustrate who still holds the power overall. In this way, the absurd state of negotiations is instructive. It is also a sad and powerful reminder of how we as a movement are not yet making the difference we need to make. As things stand, governments clearly still fear Shell and Exxon more than you and me ...

The painfully wide gulf between the rhetoric and reality of the climate talks has led some to suggest that we can ignore the negotiations. The real fight, as Michael Jacobs argues in the Guardian, for example, is “being waged in energy and finance ministries around the world, and in the boardrooms of energy companies and their bankers.“ On the importance of that battle between carbon-intensive energy and a clean energy future he is absolutely right (as right as he is wrong on nuclear power). The key question for the next few years is whether we choose an energy future that leaves 2/3 of known carbon reserves in the ground. Greenpeace already in 1997 established this „carbon logic“ – and when the Kyoto Protocol was agreed vowed „to ensure that the majority of remaining fossil fuel reserves stay below the ground and to remove the obstacles to increased investment in clean energy technologies.“ That´s why we are working now to stop investments in Arctic oil and to end the age of coal everywhere - especially in the US, Poland, India and China, where the majority of new coal plants are planned. A few years ago, I personally took a break from following the UNFCCC madness to fight coal in my native Germany – and I know the thrill of finding out that another coal plant has been stopped.

But how is the battle for a clean energy future different from the battle for a decent global climate agreement? The enemies – the coal, oil, gas and nuclear industries – for sure are the same. And there is no question that the climate negotiations over the years have not only shone the public spotlight on business and government (lack of) action on climate change, they have also created an expectation to act. The 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen failed to deliver the deal we still need. But the political energy generated by the talks helped to ensure cross-party support for the UK’s ground-breaking climate legislation (which we are now fighting to defend); contributed to DONG, Denmark’s nationally owned utility, abandoning coal investments; and delivered climate and energy targets in more countries than ever before.

The fact that it all is not enough is true, of course. But the explanation for this failure lies primarily in power relations, not in too many acronyms, negotiation strands or windowless rooms in overly air-conditioned convention centres. Those who suggest that we need to choose between engaging with the climate negotiations or fighting for a clean energy future are creating a false dichotomy. We need to do both. The chances of getting anything like a fair, ambitious and legally binding climate agreement will only improve when we see real change being made in Washington, Beijing, Brussels or Pretoria. If we get leaders to shift to a clean energy path at home, they will become less resistant to an ambitious deal at the global level. There is a reason that Germany has a better position on global climate action than many other countries: it has already started on a faster (though by no means perfect) energy transition to the renewables future we need ….

So, sitting at my desk, I salute my colleagues in Doha - not just for not getting lost in the vast conference centre, not just for seeking truth to power (“governments need to cut the crap and cut the carbon”) but especially for pushing for a way forward to a real deal in 2015 – against some powerful enemies who hate our children. Yes, I even look forward to joining the absurd theatre of the negotiations again next year in Poland. There can surely be no better place than a climate summit in Poland (over 90% dependent on coal!) to remind us that the fight for global climate action and the fight against coal are two sides of the very same coin … May be then we will realize that the REAL theatre of the absurd is the fact that we have all the solutions we need, but we're allowing a few powerful players who caused the problem in the first place to block them.