1827 



Mr. Frank (the author just quoted) began his article with a dismal 

 scenario and commentary — 



Geneva. — rit is the year 2000. The coastal powers have extended their sovereignty 

 to the centers of the oceans. Cargo and miUtary vessels must pay tribute as they 

 pass from one sovereignty zone to another or as they transit straits through which 

 passage once was free. Conflict between the "have" and "have-not" countries, as 

 governments jostle over the resources of the seabed, keeps the world in a state of 

 tension. Fish are a rarity; the few species that survive taste rather odd, for they 

 inhabit an element befouled by enormous amounts of pollution. In most coastal 

 areas, swimming in the sea is forbidden by law. The contamination has killed most 

 of the sea's phytoplankton, the primary source of the earth's oxygen. The 

 environment needed to sustain life on earth is wearing away. 



Frank commented that this picture of the world 25 years from now 

 was simply a projection of current trends. "Four major controversies — 

 over territorial seas and strategic straits, over the fish in the oceans, 

 over the oil and mineral riches of the seabed and over marine pollu- 

 tion — have merged into the one overwhelming problem of establishing 

 new regulations for the water two-thirds of the earth. And while all 

 governments acknowledge that the peace of the world and mankind's 

 very future are at stake, the powerful competing interests at work in 

 each area of controversy have thrown the technicalities of the problem 

 into the swirl of a multinational political contest." 



Today, Frank observed, there are no effective regulations for 

 sensible conservation of fisheries, nor against unilateral extension of 

 national controls seaward, nor against use of the oceans as "the 

 world's great garbage dump." He continued: "There is only a record 

 of four inconclusive attempts since 1958 to organize for ordeily use 

 and exploitation of the seas. The last attempt, the International 

 Conference on the Law of the Sea in Geneva, has just concluded with 

 no agreement by the delegations on the major issues. . . . About the 

 only clear decision was to convene yet another conference — in New 

 York, next March." Meanwhile (he concluded), it is uncertain whether 

 national appetites and the pressures of technological advance can be 

 kept in check for another year. "If they can't, the last restraints 

 may be abandoned, and with them any chance of an international 

 solution averting the kind of situation described above." *** 



It has been said before: technology is outpacing the means of 

 controlling it. The case of the ocean, however, is especially consequen- 

 tial. World peace, security, and economic and environmental well-being 

 all urgently require the establishment of some kind of effective 

 international regime governing exploitation of all ocean resources 

 and the uses of the ocean. 



One possibility, frequently voiced, is to vest in the United Nations 

 the sovereignty of the oceans beyond some generally accepted offshore 

 territorial limit. Exploitation of resources of the vast ocean commons 

 would be by U.N.-licensed operations, with fees and a share of profits 

 going into a fund to assist in the development process or otherwise to 

 benefit the world community. Another possibility, raised by Harlan 

 Cleveland among others, is to partition the oceans to adjacent states 

 in a form of marine regionalism, with the member states of each region 

 resolving for that oceanic region the rules and equities to apply within 

 it. The most controversial alternative would be for those nations 

 possessing the technology to exploit the seabed to proceed to do so, 

 with all the complications that such a technological version of 



«s Ibid. 



