ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two examples of the tragedy affecting oceans worldwide to highlight the need for a Rights of Nature system—with the appropriate legal framework to encompass the global commons. The collapse of the cod fishery is a textbook example of how overfishing—combined with an inaccurate, unresponsive regulatory strategy—caused the collapse of the Northern Atlantic cod fishery on the Grand Banks off the eastern seaboard of Canada. Another example of the tragedy of the unregulated commons is marine debris. The problem of plastics in the ocean has received much publicity; there are "garbage patches" in the Pacific Ocean where plastic articles of many sizes gyrate in the currents at various depths of the water column. According to Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Plastic debris, most of it smaller than five millimeters in size, is now dispersed over millions of square miles of ocean, and miles deep in the water column.
