Final Report Summary - HUMAN SEA (The development of human activities at sea - What legal framework? “For a new Maritime Law”)
The ERC Human Sea programme (contract no. 340770) endeavoured to address legal questions raised by the development of new activities at sea and new technological developments, «The development of human activities at sea - What legal framework?” "For a new Maritime Law”. Today, this programme would have been entitled “What coherence of the future Law of the Ocean? - Quelle cohérence du droit futur de l’Océan ?”.
It was built on 4 sector-based Work Packages 1-) Seafarers: An international market in perspective – Gens de mer, un marché international du travail ; 2-) Fight against Illegal traffics: Maritime Areas: Control and prevention of illegal traffic at sea ; 3-) Offshore activities, gas and oil, Marine renewable energies - Economic challenge and new maritime risks management: What blue growth? ; 4-) Technological innovations enabling new activities at sea - Wealth and miseries of the oceans: Conservation, Resources and Borders (Cybersecurity, Safety of navigation, Migrations by sea, Safeguarding human life at sea). These 4 themes led to a synthesis work 5-) “Towards new Maritime Law? Common concepts to define and regulate human activities at sea”.
At the outset, this reflection focused on the coherence, linkage and structuring of increasingly complex law, and on the general principles and concepts which could make it possible to “simplify” ocean and maritime law, or at least to better understand it. But in developing the four sector-specific themes, it became clear that the subject of simplification was illusory. Seeking coherence requires an understanding of complexity and of fragmentations. Initially, the marine environment had an indeterminate position in the research; since it was neither a backdrop, nor simply a constraint. Protecting the marine environment is the objective, the essential purpose, which encompasses and connects ocean law and maritime law. The project took a convoluted path to address, in a cross-cutting approach, the status of marine areas and frameworks of maritime activities, whose developments work towards the preservation of the marine environment.
But eventually, this grew to be a core issue: ocean law’s priority is to conserve the ocean, this global volume; and this conservation requires marine protected areas, shipping lanes, activities at sea, as well as setting limits and boundaries, supervision, surveillance and even the management of marine protected areas. Thus, preserving the marine environment is at the heart of ocean law, even though the wide range of maritime activities, most often licit or legal, but possibly illicit or illegal, give rise to increasingly complex law which is international, regional and necessarily national in scope. This is the reflection, which should be presented at the end of the final symposium and put into writing at the completion of the research programme.
The title of the Human Sea programme’s final symposium is a telling indication of how the reflection evolved: “Transforming the ocean law by requirement of the marine environment conservation - La transformation du droit de l’océan par l'exigence de conservation de l'environnement marin”. The synthesis endeavours to comprehend the changes leading “Towards the new Law of the Ocean”, in a dual movement of Complexity and Coherence. Ocean law is characterized by institutional and jurisdictional, as well as normative, fragmentation. Owing to States’ prerogatives and obligations for marine areas, this law must be implemented regionally and nationally, but it is structured by the principles providing its coherence, in its now major end purpose of marine environmental conservation.
The urgent situations arising from climate change cast this reflection in a seemingly obvious light.
Further informations are available on the following websites, especially the publications:
Human Sea website: https://humansea.univ-nantes.fr/
Research Notebook: https://humansea.hypotheses.org/
It was built on 4 sector-based Work Packages 1-) Seafarers: An international market in perspective – Gens de mer, un marché international du travail ; 2-) Fight against Illegal traffics: Maritime Areas: Control and prevention of illegal traffic at sea ; 3-) Offshore activities, gas and oil, Marine renewable energies - Economic challenge and new maritime risks management: What blue growth? ; 4-) Technological innovations enabling new activities at sea - Wealth and miseries of the oceans: Conservation, Resources and Borders (Cybersecurity, Safety of navigation, Migrations by sea, Safeguarding human life at sea). These 4 themes led to a synthesis work 5-) “Towards new Maritime Law? Common concepts to define and regulate human activities at sea”.
At the outset, this reflection focused on the coherence, linkage and structuring of increasingly complex law, and on the general principles and concepts which could make it possible to “simplify” ocean and maritime law, or at least to better understand it. But in developing the four sector-specific themes, it became clear that the subject of simplification was illusory. Seeking coherence requires an understanding of complexity and of fragmentations. Initially, the marine environment had an indeterminate position in the research; since it was neither a backdrop, nor simply a constraint. Protecting the marine environment is the objective, the essential purpose, which encompasses and connects ocean law and maritime law. The project took a convoluted path to address, in a cross-cutting approach, the status of marine areas and frameworks of maritime activities, whose developments work towards the preservation of the marine environment.
But eventually, this grew to be a core issue: ocean law’s priority is to conserve the ocean, this global volume; and this conservation requires marine protected areas, shipping lanes, activities at sea, as well as setting limits and boundaries, supervision, surveillance and even the management of marine protected areas. Thus, preserving the marine environment is at the heart of ocean law, even though the wide range of maritime activities, most often licit or legal, but possibly illicit or illegal, give rise to increasingly complex law which is international, regional and necessarily national in scope. This is the reflection, which should be presented at the end of the final symposium and put into writing at the completion of the research programme.
The title of the Human Sea programme’s final symposium is a telling indication of how the reflection evolved: “Transforming the ocean law by requirement of the marine environment conservation - La transformation du droit de l’océan par l'exigence de conservation de l'environnement marin”. The synthesis endeavours to comprehend the changes leading “Towards the new Law of the Ocean”, in a dual movement of Complexity and Coherence. Ocean law is characterized by institutional and jurisdictional, as well as normative, fragmentation. Owing to States’ prerogatives and obligations for marine areas, this law must be implemented regionally and nationally, but it is structured by the principles providing its coherence, in its now major end purpose of marine environmental conservation.
The urgent situations arising from climate change cast this reflection in a seemingly obvious light.
Further informations are available on the following websites, especially the publications:
Human Sea website: https://humansea.univ-nantes.fr/
Research Notebook: https://humansea.hypotheses.org/