Towards sustainable oceans in the 21st century - Ocean Sustainability in the 21st Century - page 424

climate change and related impacts on ocean life, peoples and properties, inequity in the
distribution of scientific and technological capacity to study, monitoring and legislating on
ocean-related matters, and considerations on whether the framework provided by the cur-
rent law of the sea regime is still adequate.
New scientific and societal challenges related to the oceans emerge on a regular basis.
An example in this regard is provided by current discussions on geo-engineering the cli-
mate, an option that is now gaining scientific, policy, and public attention, while also rais-
ing important environmental, ethical, social, and political challenges. The deliberate large-
scale manipulation of the Earth's climate aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change
through, for example, ocean fertilization would have direct consequences on the function-
ing of the ocean. The assumption is that adding nutrients such as nitrogen or iron into
the oceans would increase phytoplankton activity, thus enhancing the ocean's capacity to
store CO 2 in the deep sea, a process referred to as the 'biological pump'. It is difficult to
assess the impacts of large-scale testing of geo-engineering as these may generate unin-
tended consequences for the Earth system, and this should be taken fully into account in
the context of current discussions on policy aspects of geo-engineering. Moreover, asso-
ciated ethical and legal questions include impacts on the most vulnerable populations, i.e.
those already being affected by climate change; responsibility over deciding whether or
not geo-engineering techniques should be applied; the potential additional CO 2 emissions
induced by the application of geo-engineering on countries that are unwilling to reduce
their carbon emissions; and issues related to how to deal with liability and compensation
(UNESCO-SCOPE-UNEP, 2011 ) . Furthermore, as illustrated in Chapter 2 in this topic,
the ocean takes a rather long time to assimilate new CO 2 , and because the rate of increase
in fossil fuel emissions is increasing, the degree of perturbation is increasing, and the ocean
is having a harder time keeping up with the increase in carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
Theuncertaintyinthesciencepreventsusfromembarkingonhazardouspotentialsolutions
to the problems faced by the oceans.
The primacy of the law of the sea is recognized in many forums, as illustrated in
Chapters 2 and 9 , and partly also in Chapter 10 of this topic. At the same time, activities