ABSTRACT
This chapter explores and critiques the relationship between the law of the sea and anthropocentrism. Despite its ambitious claim as the constitution for the oceans, the law of the sea has hardly ever been ‘of’ or ‘for’ the sea. This chapter analyses how international law embeds and promotes anthropocentric values, interests, and considerations in the international regulation of the oceans. Consequently, it recommends rethinking the foundations of the human–sea interrelations by looking to, accommodating, and substantively mainstreaming non-anthropocentric influences into the law of the sea. To achieve this, the chapter critically examines, from a historical perspective, how the law of the sea, like much of international law, is constructed around anthropocentric interests and mostly about human narratives and fixations, with the sea only providing a contextual footnote. It also demonstrates that the language and regulatory preoccupations of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, whether in its historical or contemporary context, emphasise, even if inadvertently, human-centric interests. Accordingly, this chapter interrogates how international law can be enlisted to undo or reverse the law of the sea's anthropocentrism within the broader, radical call for a posthuman ethical engagement with nature.
