Similar to what happen at the national level, where almost all ministries of a government have some function or authority related to ocean affairs, in the United Nations system almost all specialized agencies and programs are involved in ocean affairs. The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Sea-bed Authority (ISA) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC of UNESCO) are exclusively devoted to ocean affairs: IMO for shipping, ISA for sea-bed mining and IOC for ocean sciences and ocean services.
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO and the United nations Environment program, UNEP have broader mandates, including divisions dealing with ocean affairs: UNESCO although having eliminated its Oceans Sciences Division in 1982 in favor of concentrating ocean sciences under IOC, still maintains other programs focusing on small islands development states (SIDS), culture (the secretariat for the Underwater Cultural Heritage Convention) and Education (Division on Education on Sustainable Development), FAO for fisheries and aquaculture and UNEP for regional seas and marine environment.
Other UN organizations are also involved with the ocean, like the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) dealing with ocean-atmosphere interaction, marine meteorology and climate and its implications, the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA for nuclear marine pollution, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO with industrial marine technology, the International labor Organization, ILO for the protection of maritime workers in the shipping and fisheries industries, the World Health Organization, WHO for ocean-related health problems and food-safety, the united nations development program, UNDP and the World Bank, financing the sustainable development of ocean and coasts.
Several Division of the central UN Secretariat have play also a role: the Division of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) acting as the secretariat for the Commission on Sustainable Development, coordinating programs of coasts and ocean and, the Division of Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea (UN-DOALOS), acting as the secretariat for UNCLOS, the Commission on the limits of the Continental Shelf and by default of any other meeting on ocean that is organized under the central system, like is the case today of the Informal Consultative Process on Oceans.
Although the streamlining of agencies and programs and the harmonization of policies has long been in the agenda of UN and was entrusted in the past to the Administrative Coordination Committee, composed by all heads of agencies and programs and chaired by the UN Secretary General, little progress has obtained. Perhaps realizing the limits of the inter-secretariat level to tackle this type of institutional policy formulation, one of the reform measures of former Secretary General Kofi Annan was to abolish the ACC itself[2] and therefore all its subsidiary bodies, including the Inter Agency Committee on Sustainable Development and its Sub-Committee on Oceans and Coastal Areas (IACSD-SOCA), created after the Rio de Janeiro Conference on Environment and Development. Although following looser rules of engagement, the UN-Oceans network[3] was re-created after, it is clear that the momentum from the Rio Summit to apply the program contained in Chapter 17 of Agenda 21 to enhance coordination and streamline ocean institutions was partially lost.
I am painfully aware that this is a “tour de force” of names of little known agencies, secretariats and a soup of acronyms, only known to insiders, but this is what the UN system offers today. It also offers many options to pick the forum where you want an issue to be discussed. As is well known to international lawyers, the first thing that they advise their clients to choose is the court in which they want their case to be heard. In my view, to recover the momentum, a larger forum with strong participation of civil society is needed: a truly multi stakeholder forum for the Ocean. An honorable first step is the Global Forum of Ocean Coasts and Islands[4], we initiated with Biliana Cicin-Sain to promote the Ocean Agenda in our way to Johannesburg. The Forum succeeded in putting back the ocean in WSSD and did survived thanks to the dedication of a tiny group of friends leaders and donors, but it needs now to tackle the challenge of its internal governance to reach new levels of service to the whole world community.
[1] I am postmoustly in debt to Elizabeth for guiding me in this review. See Chapter 5: Ocean Perspectives: Institutional, in Mann-Borgese, loc.cit.
[2] It was replaced by the Chief Executive Board (CEB) and two High Level Committees, one for Program and another for Administration.
[3] Http:// www.un-oceans.org/
[4] The Global Forum of Ocean, Coasts and Islands: Http://www.globaloceans.org
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