High on the list of subjects that will neither be discussed nor acted on during the coming presidential campaign is U.S. ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the most important international effort in history to protect the marine environment. This is unfortunate because ratification of UNCLOS is not only in our national interest, but is now more urgent than at any time since the Convention was first approved by the UN in 1982. Ironically, it is the failure of the United States and other nations to limit their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that has given rise to conditions that now make UNCLOS attractive to some of the very business interests that have opposed GHG limits. Despite the corporate support for UNCLOS by the oil and gas industry, shipping firms and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, opposition among Republican senators to any form of new international agreement, whether environmental or otherwise, threatens to derail ratification of UNCLOS at a time when the marine environment is under extreme and potentially irreversible stress, with the most profound implications for mankind.

This column reviews the current status of efforts to ratify UNCLOS; the compelling economic, environmental and national security reasons for that action; and the often overlooked relationship between climate change and the health of the oceans. It also suggests a possible approach to reconciling economic and environmental concerns if UNCLOS were to be ratified and urges both the Obama administration and those favoring ratification to deal more directly with the canard that UNCLOS would undermine U.S. “sovereignty.”

Senate Hearings

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