President Obama established the National Policy for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes by Executive Order on July 19, 2010. The National Ocean Policy (Policy) highlights our responsibility to improve and maintain the health of the ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes and recognizes the importance of working with States, tribes, and other partners to tackle key challenges through common sense, science-based solutions. This book discusses the Policy which aims to ensure that our Valuable Ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes resources will continue to provide a wealth of benefits that support the Nation's well-being, safety, and prosperity. Fundamentally, the National Ocean Policy coordinates, through establishment of the National Ocean Council, the ocean-related activities of Federal agencies to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness, with a focus on reduced bureaucracy, improved coordination and integration, and fiscal responsibility. The Policy helps coordinate the implementation of existing regulations and authorities by all Federal agencies in the interest of more efficient decision-making. This National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan (Plan) provides clear direction to Federal agencies and increased specificity to partners and stakeholders. The Plan reflects a commitment to develop and apply the latest science and information, conduct the business of government more efficiently, and collaborate more effectively with State, tribal, and local authorities, marine industries, and other stakeholders. This Plan describes specific actions that translate the goals of the National Ocean Policy into on-the-ground change to address key challenges, streamline Federal operations, save taxpayer dollars, and promote economic growth.

This book provides a timely analysis of the role that information-particularly scientific information-plays in the policy-making and decision-making processes in coastal and ocean management. It includes contributions from global experts in marine environmental science, marine policy, fisheries, public policy and administration, resource management

This comprehensive handbook, prepared by leading ocean policy academics and practitioners from around the world, presents in-depth analyses of the experiences of fifteen developed and developing nations and four key regions of the world that have taken concrete steps toward cross-cutting and integrated national and regional ocean policy. All chapters follow a common framework for policy analysis. While most coastal nations of the world already have a variety of sectoral policies in place to manage different uses of the ocean (such as shipping, fishing, oil and gas development), in the last two decades, the coastal nations covered in the book have undertaken concerted efforts to articulate and implement an integrated, ecosystem-based vision for the governance of ocean areas under their jurisdiction. This includes goals and procedures to harmonize existing uses and laws, to foster sustainable development of ocean areas, to protect biodiversity and vulnerable resources and ecosystems, and to coordinate the actions of the many government agencies that are typically involved in oceans affairs. The book highlights the serious conflicts of use in most national ocean zones and the varying attempts by nations to follow the prescriptions emanating from the 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention and the outcomes of the 1992, 2002, and 2012 sustainable development summits. The interrelationship among uses and processes in the coast and ocean requires that ocean governance be integrated, precautionary, and anticipatory. Overall, the book provides a definitive state-of-the-art review and analysis of national and regional ocean policies around the world.

In the years since 1994, when the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) entered into force, the ocean law regime has been profoundly affected by an interplay of new forces in global ocean affairs. Numbered among them are innovations in technology and science, the emergence of intensified piracy and other challenges to maritime security, national, and regional programs. In Ocean Law and Policy: Twenty Years of Development under the UNCLOS Regime, experts from fourteen countries present nineteen papers that provide insightful analyses of these wide-ranging issues that form the emerging new context of UNCLOS as a keystone to a working regime system. Accessible as well as authoritative, this volume offers to general readers as well as academics, policy officials, and legal experts a set of important analyses and provocative insights, forming a major contribution to the literature of ocean studies.