Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law
WATER AND OCEANS LAW IN TIMES OF CLIMATE CHANGE 2013
Legal Issues and Institutional Reactions Concerning Ocean Fertilization
Experiments on the High Seas
Bettina Boschen (LL.M), PhD Researcher (final year), Netherlands Institute for the Law of
the Sea (NILOS), Utrecht University, Netherlands
Abstract
The oceans play an important role in the global carbon cycle and climate regulation. Because
the oceans act as a natural carbon sink, the possibility to enhance the oceans capacity to
remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is the subject of a marine geo-engineering
strategy referred to as ocean fertilization. Among the different carbon dioxide removal
techniques, ocean fertilization has been the one method that has been the subject of numerous
experiments. Consequently, it has received a lot of attention in the media, scientific and
international political fora as well as by a number of intergovernmental organizations with
regulatory competence. Although the ocean fertilization experiments conducted so far were
small-scale scientific research experiments, media coverage of the experiments encouraged
the idea that the stimulation of algae blooms in order to take up CO2 from the atmosphere
could hold the cure for global warming. This in turn prompted commercial interest in
fertilizing the ocean in anticipation of the development of a global market in which credits for
carbon sequestered through fertilization might be traded. Such commercial ventures propose
to carry out significantly scaled up fertilization projects. The argument that such experiments
are best conducted in the high seas, where they are free from the regulatory competence of
coastal states and governed by the freedom of the high seas principle, in combination with the
uncertainties surrounding the potential efficacy of ocean fertilization for carbon sequestration
purposes as well as the unknown risks for harmful effects on the environment, has led
international fora to take action so as to develop rules restricting ocean fertilization activities
to small-scale scientific experiments and confirming the obligation to conduct environmental
impact assessments.
This presentation intends to examine the current position in international law concerning
ocean fertilization in the high seas, followed by the political and regulatory response of states
through intergovernmental institutions concerning the question of ocean fertilization for
climate change mitigation purposes. Finally, the presentation will question the effectiveness
of the rather piecemeal regulatory approach taken by States to address legal and regulatory
challenges arising from marine geo-engineering to mitigate the effects of anthropogenic
climate change more broadly.