As part of Brookdale Community College’s Global Citizenship Project’s lecture series, UCI Associate Director Tom Herrington gave a virtual talk on Feb. 9 about the impact of rising sea levels on coastal communities. The lecture was sponsored by the American Library Association and moderated by Brookdale Assistant Professor Judith Ungar.

The Monmouth University Institute for Global Understanding (IGU) and Urban Coast Institute (UCI) hosted “Global Perspectives on Adapting Marine Shipping Governance and Maritime Sovereignty to Respond to Climate Change” on Feb. 19, 2021. The event was part of the IGU-UCI Global Ocean Governance Lecture Series, which assembles international experts to discuss scientific and policy issues that hold important implications for coastal and marine ecosystems. The discussion was moderated by Professor Randall Abate, director of the IGU, and included the following presentations and speakers:

• “Climate Change and Global Marine Shipping Governance,” by Beatriz Martinez Romera, University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
• “Applying the Atmospheric Waqf Principle in Muslim Countries to Promote Nature’s Trust in the Marine Environment,” by Samira Idllalène, Cadi Ayyad University (Morocco)
• “Maritime Sovereignty of Submerged Pacific Islands,” by Joanna Siekiera, University of Bergen (Norway)

Abstracts & Bios

Climate Change and Global Marine Shipping Governance

ABSTRACT: If they could be accounted as a country, greenhouse gas emissions from maritime transport would be one of the world’s top 10 emitters. Moreover, shipping emissions are forecast to increase 50-250% by 2050 and the contribution of shipping to climate change will further intensify, as routes in the Arctic become available. In spite of this, shipping remains largely unregulated, being the last sector of the economy to contribute to climate change mitigation targets in line with the Paris Agreement. This presentation will examine the legal and regulatory frameworks of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) regime, the International Maritime Organization, and the role of the European Union in regulating climate-related impacts from shipping.

PRESENTER BIO: Dr. Beatriz Martinez Romera is associate professor of environmental and climate change law at the University of Copenhagen Faculty of Law. Martinez Romera has a keen interest in the international climate negotiations, and the regulatory processes at the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization, as well as the developments at the EU level. Her research includes environmental and climate change law and policy; aviation and maritime transport sectors; law-making processes at international and EU levels; environmental taxation, carbon pricing and related fiscal measures; renewable Energy; fragmentation of international law and regime interaction; environmental and climate-related regulation of the Arctic; ocean governance; and corporate environmental responsibility. She has been teaching climate change law for the last 10 years, and is the founder of TRAMEREN (Transatlantic Maritime Emissions Research Network with NYU School of Law) and ArcEnGov (Arctic Environmental and Climate Change Governance Network with Canadian Research Institutions).

Applying the Atmospheric Waqf Principle in Muslim Countries to Promote Nature’s Trust in the Marine Environment

ABSTRACT: The public trust doctrine is an important legal tool used in common law countries. It imposes limits on governmental action and provides public access rights to trust resources. The public trust doctrine is grounded in common law principles as it stems from the principle of the trust. This principle exists also in Islamic law. The public trust doctrine provides a legal framework for protecting maritime resources and the global climate system. Around the world, climate change litigation is based on the principle of the public trust (atmospheric trust litigation). Comparatively, in Muslim countries, the principle of the trust (called Waqf) has fallen into disuse for political and historical reasons. A revival of the trust in Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and Indonesia can benefit from a comparative law perspective (common law and Islamic law). A closer analysis of Waqf can reframe the environmental legal system and enhance international efforts for environmental action. Therefore, Islamic environmental law could find synergistic opportunities at the global level in the growth of the spiritual ecology movement (Eco-Islam) and at the domestic level in conjunction with Islamic finance. This paradigm shift is urgent and necessary to protect marine resources, especially given the stresses that the marine environment is experiencing from climate change impacts.

PRESENTER BIO: Dr. Samira Idllalène is a professor of law at Cadi Ayyad University at the polydisciplinary Faculty in Safi, Morocco. She teaches environmental law, law of the sea, international law, and comparative law. She is the author of several publications in coastal environmental law in Morocco. Idllalène was a visiting associate professor at the University of Oregon School of Law as part of a Fulbright grant. She also has taught marine environmental law at the Higher Institute of Maritime Studies (Casablanca) as part of the Advanced Cycle in Maritime Affairs in collaboration with the University of Quebec in Rimouski (Canada). Idllalène is member of the Jury: Trophy of Her Royal Highness the Princess Lalla Hasnae “Sustainable Coastal Zone” (Littoral durable) and board member of the Moroccan Association for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. She is a partner with Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW) and pro bono legal consultant in environmental law for several Moroccan NGOs and for the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) and the National Fisheries Research Institute (INRH). Idllalène holds a Ph.D. in marine environmental law from the University of Western Britanny in Brest (France), a master’s degree in maritime studies from the same university, and a degree in comparative law from the International University of Comparative Law (Strasbourg-France).

Maritime Sovereignty of Submerged Pacific Islands

ABSTRACT: Global climate change scenarios are seen as future concerns, but this is not the case for the Pacific island countries and territories (PICT). The natural sciences have already built substantial knowledge about the oceanographic, geological, and atmospheric processes associated with global warming and ocean change. Nonetheless, input from the social sciences and the law needs to be collected, analyzed, and executed to determine what happens when climate change impacts threaten the viability of sovereign states. Small island developing states (SIDS) contribute the least to global climate change, yet they are suffering the most from its effects, while the legal consequences of losing the most or all of their territory will threaten loss of sovereign status for those states in the international arena. As the largest water basin on Earth, the Pacific Ocean remains an isolated region in terms of geopolitics and research. This presentation examines the future of the Pacific states regarding their recognition as equal entities among other sovereign states and offers some international law proposals on this issue. The presentation also seeks to sensitize European and American audiences to certain issues of the geographically remote South Pacific that may eventually have impacts for the global community. Threats to human security, food security, land security, and statehood will also be addressed.

PRESENTER BIO: Dr. Joanna Siekiera is an international lawyer and doctor of social sciences in public policy sciences. Since 2019 she has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bergen. She was a scholarship holder of the New Zealand Government at the Victoria University in Wellington in 2015-16. She defended her doctoral thesis in 2017 at the Collegium of Socio-Economics of the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland on regional policy of the states in the South Pacific. Siekiera researches public international law, the law of the sea, and (ocean) science diplomacy. Her specialization is legal and political relations in the South Pacific. She works as a legal adviser on the Research Council of Norway grant “Mare Nullius” at the Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group. Her work on this project focuses on the legal consequences of ocean change and sea level rise on the sovereignty of states in the Pacific. Siekiera is the author of over 80 scientific publications in several languages, as well as co-author of three monographs. She is a participant in 11 scientific grants from the European Union, Norway, and Poland and is a co-investigator on the Worldwide Universities Network grant.

A short documentary created by Monmouth University student London Jones examines the possibility that economic pressures caused by factors such as sea level rise and increased coastal flooding could one day push minorities from Asbury Park’s West Side community through a process known as climate gentrification.

The film includes interviews with Monmouth University professors Melissa Alvaré, who discussed climate gentrification’s impacts around the country, and Walter Greason, who provided historical context on how “redlining” once shaped the West Side and left it particularly vulnerable today. According to Greason, the now illegal practice of redlining began in the 1930s and involved lenders grading neighborhoods based on racial composition, thereby depressing property values and investment in places like the West Side. However, Jones notes that as climate change makes today’s more affluent beachfront areas less desirable, residents could retreat inland and displace residents in areas like the West Side.

“Today, the West Side still houses the majority of Asbury Park’s minority communities and is characterized as a lower-income community compared to the east,” Jones observed in the film. “This financial reality disproportionately burdens its members when disasters occur, or in this case, climate change-induced sea level rise. While the West Side’s current residents — some whose families have resided there for the past 100 years — may not be concerned with sea level rise ruining their legacies and livelihoods, they might be when it washes away any hope of passing that part of town down to their future generations.”

The video, “Keep the Culture, Change the Fate: Responding to the Threat of Climate Gentrification to Asbury Park’s West Side,” was produced as an honors credit project in Jones’ Climate Change and the Voiceless course, taught by Rechnitz Family/Urban Coast Institute (UCI) Endowed Chair in Marine and Environmental Law and Policy Randall Abate. The project builds on her UCI-supported summer research work examining discriminatory barriers to beach access in Asbury Park and other New Jersey municipalities.

Professor Richard Veit and UCI Marine Scientist Jim Nickels recently brought their maritime archaeology class aboard the R/V Heidi Lynn Sculthorpe to scan for shipwrecks along the bottom of the Sandy Hook Bay and Shrewsbury River. Through this unique Monmouth University course, students explore the underwater history of New Jersey through readings, lectures and fieldwork, including the use of side-scan sonar and camera-equipped remote operated vehicle (ROV) technologies in area waters.

The Monmouth University Institute for Global Understanding (IGU) and Urban Coast Institute (UCI) hosted a Global Ocean Governance Lecture Series talk on Nov. 5 titled “Connected, Dynamic, at Risk: Coastal Nation Interests in a Strong New High Seas Biodiversity Treaty.” Lecture speakers included Rutgers University Associate Professor Cymie Payne and Guillermo Ortuño Crespo, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and coordinator of early career professional engagement for the U.N. Decade of Ocean Science.

Further reading: The Debate: Time for the U.S. to Sign the Law of the Sea Treaty? (PDF, includes article by Payne)

ABSTRACT

Human exploitation of the open ocean has increased rapidly over the past few decades. International agreements that manage individual commercial sectors have not kept pace with the rate of expansion of maritime industries or the effects of climate change that are already being experienced, resulting in poor management of high seas species and ecosystems. Coastal nations like the U.S., with large exclusive economic zones (EEZs), may be the first to experience the negative impacts of poor management beyond their national jurisdiction: ecological connectivity across maritime boundaries connects hundreds of ocean species to the high seas. Years of negotiation are coming to fruition with a new treaty to manage conservation and sustainable use of life in the connected, dynamic global ocean. The challenge for governments is to prioritize long-term health over short-term sectoral interests with an effective treaty for biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). It will be pivotal for ensuring the health and well-being of U.S. ecosystems and coastal communities.

BIOGRAPHIES

Cymie R. Payne is an associate professor at Rutgers University. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Human Ecology and at Rutgers Law School. Professor Payne has appeared as counsel before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in its deep seabed mining and fisheries advisory opinion cases. Currently, she is legal advisor to International Union for Conservation of Nature’s delegation to the intergovernmental conference for a legally binding agreement on conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction and chair of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental, Ocean Coasts and Coral Reefs Specialist Group. She has also been a member of the Berkeley Law faculty and served as an attorney with the U.S. Department of the Interior, the law firm of Goodwin, Procter and the U.N. Security Council’s environmental war reparations program. Professor Payne holds a M.A. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Guillermo Ortuño Crespo is a marine ecologist with a master of science from the University of St. Andrews in ecosystem-based management of marine systems and a doctorate in marine science and conservation from Duke University. Ortuño Crespo specializes in the spatial ecology patterns of distribution of both pelagic species (such as tuna, billfish and sharks) and that of pelagic fisheries (including purse seines and longliners) to identify areas of high risk and opportunity for sustainable fishing in the open ocean. He has been an active participant in the ongoing high seas BBNJ negotiations highlighting the importance of improving fisheries management beyond national jurisdiction through more transparent operations and a wider use of spatial management tools to reduce bycatch. Throughout his postdoc at the Stockholm Resilience Centre he will be working on a novel spatial management study in collaboration with the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) to develop the first ever tuna-RFMO dynamic spatial management strategy. As part of his commitment to the U.N. Decade of Ocean Science, Ortuño Crespo is facilitating the conversation on corporate sustainability among early career professionals with the ultimate objective of fostering strong relationships between upcoming science, conservation or technology young leaders and those companies which show determination in leading the way towards a more sustainable future.