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Mare nullius? Climate change, society and maritime sovereignty in the Pacific Ocean

Coordinator(s)


Edvard Hviding, Anne Salmond, Paul D'Arcy


Session presentation

With rising sea levels and the predicted permanent part or total flooding of low-lying atolls of the central Pacific, the nations constituted by such atolls (Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau) may be destined for an unprecedented political situation. It is not clear whether diminishing or disappearing national territories will imply a similar fate for the huge Exclusive Economic Zones of Pacific atoll nations (consider the EEZ of Kiribati at 3,6 million sq. kms). Yet if a contraction of land masses should lead to a similar fate for EEZs, displaced atoll populations may also lose their primary economic resource in global terms. Such patterns will also influence all Pacific states, including Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, whose EEZs are defined by outlying low land, and a set of challenges emerge relating to state and maritime sovereignities on indigenous, national and regional levels. New initiatives in the law of sovereignty and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea may be expected and will have to draw on Pacific voices and perspectives. This session draws on perspectives from anthropology, history, political science and law to discuss broadly these issues of crucial important for Pacific futures.


Paper submissions are closed



Accepted papers


Dimensions of the Unknown: Maritime Sovereignty and Sea Level Rise in the Pacific



Edvard Hviding (University of Bergen)


Sea level rise, which in some parts of the Pacific Ocean accelerates at a rate of up to three times that of the world average, increasingly threatens Pacific Islands nations whose land is composed of low-lying atolls. If the predictions are taken to the extreme, the part disappearance of the lands on which state formations are based will pose unprecedented threats to the continued sovereignty of those states. To add to the complexity of such issues for the Pacific region in in general, the larger island nations whose land mainly consists of high islands also experience threats to the continued definitions of the Exclusive Economic Zones or EEZs, since these are often based on outlying low islands. This variety of predicted, but unprecedented transformations of the basis for sovereign seas poses severe challenges to prevailing international law. The UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is, for example, not ratified by the United States, and its legal implications are in some cases poorly defined in terms of international maritime boundaries between island nations. The future role of the great Pacific Ocean in a radically transformed island environment is thus so far an unkniwn dimension. For example, should significant portions of land in an atoll nation like Kiribati disappear, that sovereign state is may stand to lose parts of its EEZ. If a low-lying atoll nation sees most of its land under water and its population relocating into diaspora, what then happens with the sovereign rights to the marine resources of that nation’s EEZ? These and related questions will be discussed with reference to projections grounded in already observable patterns of sea level rise, and an overview of topics for further investigation will be given.


Climate Change and the Political Economy of Sovereignty in Oceania



Tarcisius Kabutaulaka (University of Hawai'i-Manoa)


The idea of sovereignty is closely connected to the establishment of nation-states and the recognition of their political and economic control over a defined territory. Also important is the ability of nation-states to sustain the livelihood of its citizens. For Pacific Island nations, this entails the exploitation of land and ocean-based resources to, not only sustain the livelihood of its citizens, but also to maintain the respect and recognition of the international community. The potential loss of land and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as a result of climate change will greatly affect the ability of nation-states to perform its responsibilities. It will affect Pacific Island economies and therefore the ability of island nations to assert their sovereignty. This paper examines how climate change will affect the economies of Pacific Island countries, and how that will in turn affect the ability of these countries to assert their sovereignty. It also discusses new and creative ways in which Pacific Islanders can and have expressed and asserted their sovereignty in the face of climate change.

Te Parata and Mare Nullius: Sovereignty, the ‘commons’ and other ways of thinking about the Pacific Ocean



Anne Salmond (University of Auckland)


In Te Ao Maori (‘the Maori world’), the sea is a living being, breathing in and out with the tides. Te Parata is a great vortex at the heart of the Pacific, drawing in the currents from different islands, swirling them together. The sea is crossed by sea paths, with sea marks to guide the navigators. Today, voyaging canoes still sail from island to island, following the night journeys of their star ancestors, linking islands together.

At the time of first European arrival in New Zealand, fighting canoes came out to challenge the European ships, warning them not to come ashore. In the case of the Endeavour, Tupaia, a high priest navigator from Ra’iatea who had sailed with Cook from Tahiti, argued with local Maori, telling them that the sea was free to all. They disagreed, threatening the strangers. In several of his landfalls, Cook led a party of marines ashore and raised the British flag, claiming the sovereignty of these islands for the British Crown.

At that time in Europe, sovereignty was held to extend a cannon shot out to sea, defining a three mile limit. Over time, these coastal zones have been extended out to 12 miles, and then to 200 miles, defining an Exclusive Economic Zone. The remaining stretches of ocean are defined as mare liberum, the high seas, claimed by none.

At present, rising sea levels and drowning islands, pollution and rubbish gyres, acidification of the ocean and over-fishing indicate that the Pacific and its people are in trouble. In this paper, I’d like to explore alternative and perhaps more adaptive ways of thinking about relations between people and the sea, at a time of climate change.

Land and maritime rights of relocated Pacific Islanders: the case of Gilbertese settlers in Solomon Islands



Tammy Tabe (The University of the South Pacific)


Forced relocation in the Pacific Islands is not a new phenomenon, but has occurred throughout history for political, economic, and social reasons. Agendas of intra-Pacific relocation have often been associated with colonialism, and have revealed both advantageous and disadvantageous situations to the settlers and their hosts. The frequent emphasis on economic costs of relocating peoples from one island to another, or across island groups, has ignored the social costs entailed in such schemes. It is now crucial to consider new scenarios of future relocation of Pacific Islanders as a result of sea-level rise and other effects of climate change, and to pose questions that allow for re-thinking the social costs involved in the displacement of Pacific populations from their home islands. What will happen to their rights as citizens to sovereign land and to shares in the Exclusive Economic Zones? What if the islands they are relocated from disappear with the rising sea-levels? Will land and maritime rights be lost, or will relocated islanders be able to retain them despite living elsewhere? Who will take over these citizens’ rights if they lose them, and how will loss of citizens’ rights be compensated for? In the few examples of Pacific Islanders being forced to relocate from their home islands during the colonial period, some still retain rights to their home islands, while others do not. This paper examines the loss of land and maritime rights of Gilbertese people relocated in the 1950s from Gilbert and Phoenix Islands to Solomon Islands, and the challenges they face as settlers regarding land and maritime rights in Solomon Islands.


MARE NULLIUS – Mai te Moana Nui a Kiwa ki Tikapa Moana: From the Pacific Ocean to the Hauraki Gulf



Dan Hikuroa (University of Auckland)


Polynesians refer to the Pacific Ocean as Te Moana Nui a Kiwa – the Great Ocean of Kiwa. Kiwa was a member of the primal offspring and guardian of the ocean. Hinemoana was married to Kiwa and is a personification of the Pacific Ocean.

Te Moana Nui a Kiwa was viewed as the great connector – it did not separate the many islands of Polynesia, it connected them. One history describes it as a great dish, with all of the islands of the Pacific situated around the edge. Vast detailed knowledge of how to navigate its many islands was generated. On account of it having been crossed by their ancestors so many times, Te Moana Nui a Kiwa was also regarded by some Māori as the main marae of their ancestors. Consequently they laid a claim to the Māori land Court for guardianship to be vested in Māori trustees.

Tikapa Moana – the Hauraki Gulf, forms the eastern seaboard of the Auckland region, and is the coastal section of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa. Tikapa Moana is at risk from death by a thousand cuts, but a unique process currently underway may rescue it. A super-collaborative stakeholder led marine spatial planning process – Sea Change Tai Timu Tai Pari – will produce a marine spatial plan in mid-2015. Those involved have been asked to make decisions ‘on behalf of the Gulf’. Māori engagement and inclusion of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge, protocols and practice) were recognized as fundamental to the process and are part of its structure. Fundamental to this is the concept of kaitiakitanga – best translated as guardianship with an inter-generational outlook.

Te Moana Nui a Kiwa and Tikapa Moana and its people are in trouble. In this paper I will detail the Sea Change Tai Timu Tai Pari process and my thoughts about likely impacts of the marine spatial plan for Tikapa Moana. I will then broaden the focus and explore the concept of the Hinemoana (the personification of the Pacific Ocean) having her own rights – similar to the Whanganui River in New Zealand, and consequent implications.

Oceania and its people: the security of life in coastal communities



Joeli Veitayaki (University of the South Pacific)

Peter Nuttall (University of the South Pacific)


Climate change has arrived. It is the greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and well-being of the peoples of the Pacific and one of the greatest challenges for the entire world (Majuro Declaration, 2013, Article 1)

Under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Pacific Island Countries (PICs) jointly hold access rights and management responsibilities over 30 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, enormously increasing the maritime areas of the PICs. Fish stocks aside, the new wealth and resources associated with these extended areas are untapped, the burden placed on the custodians is overwhelming. Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have established regional organizations to assist them with advice, development and environment management activities, education and training on pertinent issues determined by member countries. However, exploding populations, widespread pollution, sensitive coastal environment degradation, dwindling reefs and fisheries, increasing emphasis on economic development, and the development of new technology in aquaculture, postharvest fisheries, aquarium trade and renewable energy transition increase demand on trained human capacity. Pacific SIDS have resource management responsibilities and jurisdictional rights over a significant portion of the world’s ocean space rich in resources including fisheries, gas, seabed minerals and renewable energy. Many are vulnerable to the conquest of the sea, predicted to worsen with climate change. Small and microstates are not benefiting fully from their marine resources tenure due to inadequate technical and management capacity and limited financial and physical resources. This paper focuses on critical aspects of life in the Pacific Ocean, a unique water-based region, ancient home to voyagers, Islanders and villagers, a place where small is still beautiful but where unprecedented levels of change threaten the existence of countries and communities. Pacific peoples are observant, adaptive and resilient, traits honed by millennia of close association and intimacy with their ocean and island homes. These traits have allowed them to live with minute resource and ever changing island environments for thousands of years. Contemporary changes such as global warming, acidification, environmental degradation, alteration and loss of natural habitats, loss of territory and boundaries, globalisation and rampant consumerism promise a gathering tropical cyclone or tsunami of magnitude greater than anything Pacific Islanders have ever faced.

Marine Sovereignty in the Marshall Islands and the Case for Wake



Ingrid Ahlgren (Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University)


The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), with average land mass of 181 km² sitting a mean average of only 2 meters above sea level, has been noted as one of the most vulnerable to sea level rise, and as a ‘canary in the coal mine’ case study at forefront of the debate on climate change. With fisheries throughout its territorial waters increasingly important to the RMI’s economy (of which over 80% of government revenue is derived directly, or indirectly, from foreign aid), there has been a recent push to officially define the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). In January 2015, the RMI Cabinet adopted its national boundary guidelines based on archipelagic baselines, and signed bilateral agreements with Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia to define joint borderlines. The remaining boundary challenges include parts of the eastern and northern areas, particularly as they relate to the USA’s claim to Wake Island, the home to a US Army missile facility some 500 km north of the RMI’s northernmost atoll Bokak (Taongi).
The Marshallese have held an ancestral attachment to Wake, or Eneenkio to the Marshallese, for many years as a site of great cultural importance. An unsuccessful attempt to reclaim the atoll in the 1990s was focused primarily on indigenous histories, relying on local lore and knowledge compiled, in part, by anthropologist Dirk Spennemann, and the nature of its seizure by force in 1899. As of February 2015, an inside source suggests the RMI may revisit the case with the United States. A successful annexation of Enenkio would increase the EEZ of the RMI (currently an estimated 2,131,000 km²) by somewhere between 250 and 400,000 km², an increase amounting between 11 to 19%. Such a territorial expansion will most certainly have an impact on the RMI’s ‘blue’ economy in the near and long term future. This paper will present a case study of the history, challenges, and implications of the annexation of Eneenkio by the Marshall Islands, particularly in light of anticipated sea level rise and land loss.

Putting people first: A human rights based approach to climate related loss and damage



Alison Fleming (Fridtjof Nansen Institute)


The Fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change clearly recognizes that there are limits to adaptation, and that there is a level of inertia within our current systems that is locked in which will result in irreversible losses and damages. Much of the burden of these extreme impacts will fall on Small Island Developing States, and is already becoming a reality for many Pacific Island Countries. For Pacific Islands where culture and landscape are so tightly interwoven, the loss of territory is not simply a threat to livelihoods and state sovereignty but it impacts on the very core of tradition and belief. The consequences of these “non-economic” losses on the fabric of a society are yet to be properly understood. The UNFCCC has formally acknowledged the need to address loss and damage through the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, however the pervading approach follows the discipline of disaster management focusing on risk assessment and insurance. This in turn looks to place monetary value on all loss and damage, including those without a real world market value like cultural heritage. Arguably, alternative discourses such as a human rights based approach may enable a more holistic method for addressing loss and damage, a human-centered approach to a deeply emotive issue.
This research addresses three core areas. Firstly it maps the current discourses present in the negotiations, examining the underlying the strategies and interdiscursive interaction between coalitions. Secondly it considers the interlinkages between the human rights regime, and the challenges faced by Pacific Island nations. Finally it provides some recommendations to how negotiators may be able to capitalize on their moral authority as Small Island States through invoking a human rights discourse, potentially resulting in greater influence over items relating to loss and damage in the UNFCCC process.

Visualizing Climate Change in Oceania



Katerina Teaiwa (Australian National University)


American documentary photographer Dorothea Lange once said “photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” Campaigns for raising awareness of the political, social and environmental impacts of climate change and associated severe weather across Oceania are increasingly visual in terms of photography and the creation of documentary, film and other moving images. They are most effective, for example, in framing the rising sea as threat. By reflecting on several key images circulated in social and mainstream media over the last year, my presentation explores how the visual emotively links people, knowledge, culture, art, activism, policy, science, and the environment in Oceania, in a trans-disciplinary fashion. But what are the potentials and consequences of our visual framings as we capture and circulate discursively charged images? To what degree is the Pacific Ocean itself imagined as passive space, inhabited place and active agent?


General Discussion



Edvard Hviding (University of Bergen)

Anne Salmond (University of Auckland)





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