Whose Ocean?

Exploring ocean stewardship through an international assembly

The ocean is crucial to life and climate, but its voice is barely heard in (international) law and policy decisions. While the UN explicitly speaks about “our ocean”, it is completely unclear who the “our” refers to. Does the ocean belong to humanity? To states? Or does the ocean belong to itself? To the organisms (non-human animals, plants, and microbes) that live in it and/or to the materialities that make the ocean (water, rocks, elements)?

During our Incubator Project, we investigated what the question “whose ocean?” means to academics from Utrecht University and abroad. Our survey revealed that answers were split between “the ocean belongs to everyone”, “the ocean belongs to no one”, and “the question is misguided”; and an analysis of these results have recently been published. Updates regarding this project can be found on this page and on Are.na. 

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  The Assembly
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  The reading group
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  Get to know the team
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  Incubator project publication

The 'Whose ocean?' assembly

In this Signature Project, we followed up on the “whose ocean?” question, by preparing and holding an assembly to explore how the ocean could be meaningfully represented at international and national fora such as courts of law and in diplomacy. Inspired by the mock court on the representation of the North Sea, organized by the Embassy of the North Sea in de Peace Palace in The Hague, and the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes developed by Indian lawyer, academic and researcher Radha D'Souza and Dutch artist Jonas Staal, the assembly proposed a communal relationship doctrine for the stewardship of the ocean.

The outcome of our project is a charter for how the ocean can be approached in international law and diplomacy, through the lens of both human-related and non-anthropocentric narratives. To translate these more-than-human perspectives into narrative frameworks that can be understood by humans, we invited and financially supported writers, artists, and groups with intimate ties to the ocean to contribute to the assembly, including its preparation. 

The charter and our other findings will be relevant to (inter)national lawyers, NGOs, and diplomats. The results will be discussed within the “Levende Oceanen”-discussion group that includes key ocean stakeholders from all Dutch ministries. It will also be shared with Dutch academics via the SCOR-NL-group.