This Special Issue is designed to discuss and examine relevant legal issues concerning ocean governance in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the long-lasting benefits of the international community. It will cover, inter alia, the safety of navigation and maritime security, the sustainable use of marine resources (living and non-living), marine environmental protection, climate change, and marine scientific research.

This Special Issue is designed to discuss and examine relevant legal issues concerning ocean governance in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the long-lasting benefits of the international community. It will cover, inter alia, the safety of navigation and maritime security, the sustainable use of marine resources (living and non-living), marine environmental protection, climate change, and marine scientific research.

This open access book summarizes peer-reviewed articles and the abstracts of oral and poster presentations given during the YOUMARES 9 conference which took place in Oldenburg, Germany, in September 2018. The aims of this book are to summarize state-of-the-art knowledge in marine sciences and to inspire scientists of all career stages in the development of further research. These conferences are organized by and for young marine researchers. Qualified early-career researchers, who moderated topical sessions during the conference, contributed literature reviews on specific topics within their research field. .

Although the ocean-and the resources within-seem limitless, there is clear evidence that human impacts such as overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution disrupt marine ecosystems and threaten the long-term productivity of the seas. Declining yields in many fisheries and decay of treasured marine habitats, such as coral reefs, has heightened interest in establishing a comprehensive system of marine protected areas (MPAs)-areas designated for special protection to enhance the management of marine resources. Therefore, there is an urgent need to evaluate how MPAs can be employed in the United States and internationally as tools to support specific conservation needs of marine and coastal waters. Marine Protected Areas compares conventional management of marine resources with proposals to augment these management strategies with a system of protected areas. The volume argues that implementation of MPAs should be incremental and adaptive, through the design of areas not only to conserve resources, but also to help us learn how to manage marine species more effectively.

In this innovative volume, the author addresses some important challenges related to the effective and equitable governance of marine protected areas (MPAs). These challenges are explored through a study of 20 MPA case studies from around the world. A novel governance analysis framework is employed to address some key questions: How can top-down and bottom-up approaches to MPA governance be combined? What does this mean, in reality, in different contexts? How can we develop and implement governance approaches that are both effective in achieving conservation objectives and equitable in fairly sharing associated costs and benefits? The author explores the many issues that these questions raise, as well as exploring options for addressing them. A key theme is that MPA governance needs to combine people, state and market approaches, rather than being based on one approach and its related ideals. Building on a critique of the governance analysis framework developed for common-pool resources, the author puts forward a more holistic and less prescriptive framework for deconstructing and analyzing the governance of MPAs. This inter-disciplinary analysis is aimed at supporting the development of MPA governance approaches that build social-ecological resilience through both institutional and biological diversity. It will also make a significant contribution to wider debates on natural resource governance, as it poses some critical questions for contemporary approaches to related research and offers an alternative theoretical and empirical approach.

A Sustainable Future for Small States: Pacific 2050 is part of the Commonwealth Secretariat’s regional strategic foresight programme that examines whether current development strategies set the region on a path to achieve sustainable development by 2050. The study analyses whether Commonwealth Pacific small states (Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu) will achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. It reviews critical areas that can serve as a catalyst for change in the region: governance (examining political governance, development effectiveness and co-ordination, and ocean governance); non-communicable diseases; information and communications technology and climate change (focussing on migration and climate change, and energy issues). In each of these areas, possible trajectories to 2050 are explored, gaps in the current policy responses are identified, and recommendations are offered to steer the region towards the Pacific Vision of ‘a region of peace, harmony, security, social inclusion, and prosperity, so that all Pacific people can lead free, healthy, and productive lives’.

The oceans cover more than seventy per cent of the surface of the planet and they provide many vital ecosystem services. However, the health of the world's oceans has been deteriorating over the past decades and the protection of the marine environment has emerged as one of the most pressing legal and political challenges for the international community. An effective solution depends upon the cooperation of all states towards achieving agreed objectives. This book provides a critical assessment of the role that international law plays in this process, by explaining and evaluating the various legal instruments that have been negotiated in this area, as well as key trends in global ocean governance. Starting with a detailed analysis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the book considers the main treaties and other legal texts that seeks to prevent, reduce, and control damage to the marine environment caused by navigation, seabed exploitation, fishing, dumping, and land-based activities, as well as emerging pressures such as ocean noise and climate change. The book demonstrates how international institutions have expanded their mandates to address a broader range of marine environmental issues, beyond basic problems of pollution control to include the conservation of marine biological diversity and an ecosystems approach to regulation. It also discusses the development of diverse regulatory tools to address anthropogenic impacts on the marine environment and the extent to which states have adopted a precautionary approach in different maritime sectors. Whilst many advances have been made in these matters, this book highlights the need for greater coordination between international institutions, as well as the desirability of developing stronger enforcement mechanisms for international environmental rules.