In the South China Sea, meanwhile, Beijing continues a campaign of maritime harassment against civilian vessels from neighboring nations, including Vietnam and the Philippines.
Yes, our oceans are under threat. And lest we forget, climate change is contributing even further harm. The shipping industry is a significant carbon emitter, and in the past decade, its grown by 20 percent. Now, ambitious countries’ green policies are being derailed by geopolitics.
But paradoxically, the fact that the oceans face so many adversaries may be a positive thing. Considering how indispensable they are to modern economies — not to mention life on Planet Earth — an extraordinary range of people, organizations and nations ought to be interested in a better future.
In other words, we need a coalition to protect our oceans.
Imagine if governments as different from each other as those of Indonesia and the U.S., organizations as varied as Greenpeace and shipping lines, and celebrities as wide-ranging as, say, actor Tom Hanks (who endured the horror of ocean disorder in his role as Captain Phillips) and activist Greta Thunberg teamed up to speak about the threats to our oceans — those posed by governments, by shady operators, by the climate crisis. Imagine if they spoke about what would happen to our oceans if those harming it were to prevail, and how profoundly that would affect not just the world’s economies but the health of our oceans too.
Thunberg and the Pentagon may have diametrically different perspectives on the world, but protecting our oceans is a cause they can both agree on. In fact, the only parties one could imagine standing against protecting our oceans would be those actively harming them: an unpalatable coalition including the Houthis, its main backer Iran and the countries that do nothing to stop or even criticize their attacks; countries that conduct trade using the shadow fleet despite knowing it can cause oil spills; China, which engages in dangerous maritime harassment in the South China Sea; Russia, which appears linked to recent attacks on undersea cables; shady operators that sell scrapheap-ready ships into the shadow fleet; the elusive entrepreneurs who buy these ships; and pirates and fishermen who overfish or illegally catch.
But this group isn’t so enormous. It’s certainly not so big that the oceans can’t be protected. And if such a campaign were to exist, which country, company or person would openly announce: “No, I support harming our oceans”?
Of course, such a campaign wouldn’t save our oceans straight away. And some members of the ocean-harming coalition may brazenly continue harmful activities. But an ocean-protection coalition could help bring attention, name and shame some of the shady characters and outfits involved, and demonstrate to the world that a massive majority of nations and people still support order on the high seas.
