David Bosco on the struggle to govern the world’s oceans

David Bosco, associate professor and chair of International Studies in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International StudiesThe oceans have been all over the news recently. In the South China Sea, China has been asserting maritime claims that many others in the region—including the United States – reject. At the United Nations, more than a hundred countries recently negotiated a new agreement for protecting the ocean environment. Meanwhile, diplomats and scientists have been meeting in Jamaica to figure out whether it is safe to mine the deep seabed. 

In his book, The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans (Oxford University Press, 2022), David Bosco aims to give people an understanding of ocean governance – how we got where we are now, how the existing frameworks for the ocean came about, and how the origins of some of the ideas we take for granted on the subject stem from what he refers to as a “sometimes convoluted, controversial past.” 

Bosco is associate professor and chair of International Studies in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies where his research focuses on the political dynamics of international organizations and international law. In The Poseidon Project, he addresses many aspects of ocean governance, including how much water a country can control beyond its borders, how the law of the sea and the concept of “freedom of the seas” have changed over history, and the relevance to today’s maritime disputes.  

Planet earth on a black background. Elements of this image furnished by NASA. High quality photoThe importance of water governance is frequently underestimated. Oceans make up 70% of the earth’s surface, and 80% of the world’s cargo is shipped over the oceans. Bosco says, “There is a wonderful image taken from space, where if you catch the earth from the right angle, essentially all you can see is ocean. However, since human activity is largely on land, that’s what we tend to focus on. But figuring out how to govern this 70% of the earth, it’s an enormous challenge.”  

With this book, one of Bosco’s major goals is to give people a good sense of the historical context of maritime law. He says, “We are at this moment now where we are really transitioning between different worlds…between a world where freedom of the seas was the kind of the governing doctrine for the oceans, and something else. But what this something else is very much undetermined, and it could go in multiple different directions. Currently, the oceans are under international control, but the institutions that have been put in place are very fragile.” 

An important early framework for governing the world’s oceans was presented in 1609 by Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius who established freedom of the seas, “mare liberum” which stated that the oceans should be free for all to use, not under the ownership of any particular country. As Bosco explains, “In the early 1600s, it seemed that resources of the ocean were totally inexhaustible, and the idea that one country’s fishing somewhere could detract from the ability of someone else to access fish was hard to imagine.”  

In more recent times, however, our understanding has changed. Bosco says, “The modern world has shown that not to be the case. Fish stocks have become endangered in a number of parts of the world. It’s not just about fish stocks, it’s also about other marine resources and the health of the oceans overall.” 

Throughout the book, Bosco talks about the changes regarding how much water a country can control beyond its borders. He says, “For a long time, the rule was that you could go three miles from the coast, and it would be considered national waters where only that country and its inhabitants would be allowed to fish, and it was considered national territory.” Why three miles? Bosco says, “It was called the cannon shot rule, because the notion was that you can control the water as far as you can shoot a canon, which is about three miles.”  

The three-mile rule remained through the 16th and 17th centuries, but by the 20th century, countries wanted to control much larger areas of ocean. Bosco says, “After a long and complex negotiation in the 1970s and early 1980s, we ended up with a 12-mile territorial sea, which quadrupled the traditional size. But another big change was that coastal countries got to control an economic exclusive zone of 200 miles. That means they don’t own the waters, but they control the fishing, the mining, etc.” 

Landlocked countries – those without ocean borders – were left without territorial waters and economic exclusive zones. However, they did have the right to “flag” vessels, meaning having legal jurisdiction over ships flying their flag. Bosco’s concern about this system is that often countries flag vessels that have no real connection to their country, and there is little incentive for them to respond if those ships break international laws. 

Military conflicts have also been a factor in a shifting understanding of freedom of the seas. Bosco says, “If we look, for example, at World War I and World War II, you see vast enclosures closures of maritime space during those wars. We saw things like unrestricted submarine warfare, but also attempts to have huge maritime blockades and that very much flew in the face of the Grotian doctrine of freedom of the seas.” Bosco says it is reasonable to assume that any future naval conflicts would again result in massive closures of the ocean to maritime commerce. 

Concerns about laws – or lawlessness – on the open seas has been around since ancient times. Bosco explains, “We love the lore, the mystique of piracy, but it is a very real and very dangerous thing…as soon as maritime activity became significant, you had violence at sea. So, keeping that violence down or under control has been a challenge since ancient times.”  

Cover of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World's Oceans (Oxford University Press, 2022).Another important concern Bosco explores in his book is the idea that freedom of the seas does not benefit all people equally. Developing countries have argued for decades that ocean freedom benefited colonizing countries at the expense of those whom they dominated. Bosco says, “That is why there is this alternative conception that has been put forward with a lot of support from newly independent countries saying ‘We need to replace freedom of the Seas with the idea that oceans are the common heritage of humanity. They should be used on behalf of the international community and not just the rich advanced countries that can exploit the oceans.’”  

The Poseidon Project follows Bosco’s two prior books: Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics (Oxford University Press, 2014), and Five to Rule them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World (Oxford University Press 2009). 

Bosco has been invited to share his research for the book with various audiences including NPR’s Marketplace, World Oregon, the Travels Through Time podcast, and at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals. Bosco co-authored an article, “Deep seabed mining plans pit renewable energy demand against ocean life in a largely unexplored frontier” that The Conversation included in their June 2023 list of five essential reads on invasive species, overfishing and other threats to sea life.