‘Real interest’? Understanding the 2018 Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12701 |
| Author | Klaus Dodds |
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
‘Real interest’? Understanding the 2018
Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas
Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean
Klaus Dodds
Royal Holloway, University of London
Abstract
The 2018 Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean (Agreement) is a notable interven-
tion in living resources management. The Agreement seeks to anticipate future fisheries management and serves as a reminder
as how international legal frameworks such as UNCLOS ‘regionalise’seas and oceans. But thus far analyses of the Agreement
have tended to focus on its legal and managerial qualities and implications. This paper offers a different reading of the Agree-
ment, informed by critical geopolitics, which focuses on how the Agreement actively produces ‘the Central Arctic Ocean’(CAO)
which it then seeks to manage. The Agreement will shape not only the future geopolitics of the Arctic Ocean but also the
diverse array of interests held by Arctic Ocean coastal states, indigenous peoples, environmental groups and extra-territorial
parties such as China. Having ‘due regard’for rights of others needs to co-exist with coastal states eager to protect their sover-
eign rights. Managing ‘due regard’and ‘adjacency’will be challenging in the Central Arctic Ocean, present and future.
Policy Implications
•Political space is never innocent, and the territorial practices of states deserve careful scrutiny.
•The Central Arctic Ocean is an emerging area of policy concern, and the 2018 Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High
Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean is notable for its willingness to address fisheries management before it occurs.
•The 2018 Agreement actively creates a ‘Central Arctic Ocean’and makes it an object of and for governance. Anthro-
pogenic climate change continues to alter the water, ice and air around the North Pole.
•While the 2018 Agreement addresses commercial fisheries, it does not address other areas of interest (e.g. resources on
the seabed of ‘the area’) and other stakeholders interested in the high seas of the Arctic Ocean, including indigenous peo-
ples and militaries.
•The implementation of the 2018 Agreement will provide valuable insights into how interested parties deal with informa-
tion and management gaps regarding fish species, geographical areas of application, control and surveillance and mem-
bership gaps. Further investment and negotiation will be necessary in science diplomacy environmental peace-building in
order to protect the CAO from possible military tension.
•The management of the CAO raises not only issues of adjacency with the five Arctic Ocean coastal states such as Canada
and Russia but also ecological connectivity. International conventions such as the Convention on the Conservation of
Migratory Species of Wild Animals recognises parties and ‘range state’, acknowledging the scale and scope of migratory
animals and their habitats.
•One area to watch iswhether state parties actively encouragethe incorporation of indigenousand local knowledge into science-
based fisheries management of the CAO. ‘Incorporation’is not unproblematic as indigenous peoples have warned in the past
that indigenousknowledge is often used by settler colonialstates to consolidate their privilege and sovereigninterests.
The Central Arctic Ocean and ocean governance
Rising nations require to know what their resources
are (Harrington, 1878; Geological Survey of Canada
Report of Progress (1875–6)).
‘Ice has traditionally covered the high seas of the
central Arctic Ocean year-round. Recently, the
melting of Arctic sea ice has left large areas of the
high seas uncovered for much of the year’.
Statement by National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA, 2018) on the signing of the
2018 Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas
Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO), 3 Octo-
ber 2018
The central proposition of this paper is that the 2018
Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in
the Central Arctic Ocean (henceforth Agreement) is an
important moment for ocean governance, which is bedev-
illed inter alia by the challenges of climate change, the pres-
ence of trans-national pollution including micro-plastics and
the spectre of resource exploitation in the future (Brewer,
©2019 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2019) 10:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12701
Global Policy Volume 10 . Issue 4 . November 2019
542
Research Article
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