ioo 



present strength is inadequate to the task of 

 planning and coordinating a program of the 

 scope of the International Decade of Ocean 

 Exploration. This has been recognized both 

 by the IOC and UNESCO, and steps now 

 are being considered to strengthen it. To the 

 Commission, this is essential. The IOC re- 

 quires additional staff, budget, and expertise. 



Because IOC is a part of UNESCO, it is 

 difficult for it to obtain the necessary budget- 

 ary support ; the IOC is in competition with 

 all other educational and cultural programs 

 of UNESCO. Its subsidiary position also 

 makes it difficult for it to deal effectively with 

 other treaty-level organizations of the United 

 Nations system, such as the FAO and the 

 AVMO. 



The diversity of international organiza- 

 tions participating in some manner in marine 

 science and engineering, and in particular the 

 parallel interests of the WMO and the IOC 

 in environmental monitoring and prediction, 

 have been matters of concern to the 

 Commission. 



The World Weather Program, a plan to 

 improve the global system for monitoring 

 and predicting the state of the atmosphere, 

 is being developed under WMO's sponsor- 

 ship. The Integrated Global Ocean Station 

 System (IGOSS) is being planned by IOC 

 to monitor and predict the state of the oceans. 

 The latter plan includes many elements also 

 included in the World Weather Program, 

 and coordination procedures have been estab- 

 lished between IOC and WMO. IOC also has 

 international coordinating responsibility for 

 the Pacific Tsunami Warning System. Other 

 international organizations are responsible 

 for such additional activities as the Ocean 

 Station Vessel Program and the Interna- 

 tional Ice Patrol. There is general recogni- 

 tion that present arrangements for coordina- 

 tion of the activities of these international 

 organizations, though conmiendable as far as 



they go, are inadequate. The Secretary Gen- 

 eral of the U.N., in fact, has noted the unique 

 character of the job to be done and the lack 

 of experience among international organiza- 

 tions in taking joint action on matters of such 

 complexity. However, because there are a va- 

 riety of alternative approaches and no clear 

 solution to the problem, he refrained from 

 recommending a specific course of action. 



It is a perplexing problem. The WMO has 

 gained the most experience with operational 

 systems and has established a systems plan- 

 ning staff and precedent-breaking financing 

 arrangements to develop the World Weather 

 Progi-am. The IOC's orientation in the past 

 has been more toward education and re- 

 seai'ch, but it has successfully organized a 

 variety of field programs, some of substan- 

 tial scale. It also has midertaken impoi'tant 

 tasks for the Fisheries Department of the 

 FAO, which is heavily involved in marine 

 biology, and for other smaller organizations. 



The Commission concludes that the inte- 

 gration of NEMPS into a global system 

 would be facilitated if all international 

 ocean and atmospheric monitoring activities 

 were under tlie purview of a single interna- 

 tional organization at the treaty level. This 

 step, however, is not immediately critical to 

 the successful development of the proposed 

 monitoring and prediction program because 

 of the existing measures of coordination. 



The nations of the world ultimately must 

 establish an intergovernmental organization 

 dealing with ocean matters at the treaty level 

 and having adequate authoi'ity, personnel, 

 and financial resources. It is not clear wheth- 

 er it would be better ( 1 ) to establish an addi- 

 tional intergovernmental body dealing with 

 the oceans in parallel with the other special- 

 ized agencies of the U.N. system (such as 

 WMO and FAO) by raising IOC to the sta- 

 tus of another specialized agency or (2) to 

 form a new body incorporating the functions 



