ABSTRACT

This chapter highlights the vitally important roles of ethics, justice, and human rights, all of which will become more important and more challenging as environmental change is felt more forcefully around the world. The ethics of marine environmental change should provide the grounding for political and policy responses. The chapter identifies vital ‘ethical building blocks’ and considers how these might be translated into legal practice in the marine context. It asks whether human rights approaches and viewing the oceans as a legal entity have utility in marine environmental governance. The notion of a ‘covenant’ of leading states, within the context of UNCLOS, has the potential to support serious claims for environmental justice while having sufficient political viability to shape marine environmental governance amidst global environmental change. This involves a ‘global initiative for ocean recovery and restoration’, aggressive cuts in carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants, expansion of marine protected areas, protection of coastal ecosystems, and the sustainable regulation of fisheries. Doing all of these things will promote ethics, justice and human rights while also realising the objectives discussed by other contributors to this book.