By Brian Glaser
law briefs
When Suffolk Law Professor Stephen Cody thinks about the climate crisis and ecological preservation, he’s as likely to be looking deep into the sea as high up in the sky. His new paper, “Oceanic Impunity” (97 Southern California Law Review, forthcoming), argues that protecting the oceans from overfishing, pollution, ocean dumping, and other ecologically harmful actions “is essential to avoid climate disaster.”
Illegal fishing, for example, generates tens of billions of dollars a year for criminals who thin already severely depleted fishing stocks. When a fish population becomes too thin, that species can’t replenish itself.
“This paper is written for both environmental and international law scholars,” Cody says. Because discussion of environmental protection is most often centered on regulation and treaty-based cooperation, Cody is trying to draw attention to enforcement and to develop mechanisms for international prosecutions of these environmental harms.
He understands that this is no small task: “There’s a lot of skepticism about trying to have international criminal enforcement on the high seas—partly because it’s such a vast geographic area, and partly because it’s so hard to get voluntary compliance,” he says. Cody sees a risk of undermining regulatory regimes with enforcements that disincentivize participation. But as the climate crisis accelerates, he believes the need for more stringent and sophisticated international cooperation on oceanic environmental enforcement is necessary.
He notes that the regimes he’s proposing are intended to complement environmental treaties and agreements, not replace them. “There’s no organization or institution that’s responsible for enforcement on the high seas,” he says. Currently, when there are destructive actions that are sanctioned by bad actor states or ignored by the state, there aren’t mechanisms for addressing those crimes on international waters.
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Photograph by Michael J. Clarke
winter 2024
