Carter's Ocean Opportunity

...The European Coal and Steel Community and the European Common Market are excellent examples of how "institutionalization" can transform problems and problem-solvers...

...leadership had been a--perhaps the--major reason for the pessimism with which so many observers view the Conference...

...The tall ships which sailed into New York Harbor on July 4th generated more media coverage than all five working sessions of the Law of the Sea Conference put together...

...And it could make a major contribution to the development of fish farming, i.e., aquaculture, an important potential for protein for a word 29 April 1977:268 whose population is increasing rapidly...

...A sixth working session is scheduled to begin in New York City on May 23rd...

...approach could turn the Conference around and help, even at this late date, to move it back in the common heritage direction...

...President Carter has already shown a sure instinct for dramatization...

...Pope John and Vatican II played "a significam part in the subsequent chain of events, but the profound revolution through which humankind was then, and is still, passing has been too Commonweal: 269...

...One hopes that the Carter administration will quickly grasp them...

...President Ford's decision to sign the unilateral 200mile fishing zone bill is a perfect example of the defects in U.S...

...However, there are a number of factors which suggest that such an initiative, if sensitively handled, would be given serious attention and might even command substantial support in the Conference...

...Other "Trilaterals" include David Rockefeller, William Scranton and Hedley Donovan, editor-in-chief of Time...

...But, as we have indicated, the hour is late...

...This is a far cry from the six billion dollars a year by 1975 that would have come under Pardo's plan, Of course, Pardo included offshore minerals----beyond 12 milesmin his proposal...

...Some of them--or so it appears to this observermwould respond to an appeal to the Conference to move back in the common heritage direction...

...It will draw the nations of the world together in continuing and constructive action and dialogue not only on the complex and urgent ocean problem, but on other problems as well...

...However, recent unilateral grabs by prominent nations in the Conference have generated a mood of deep pessimism about the Conference's future...

...The attention concentrated on that meeting is justified...

...As we have indicated, ocean policy must, by its nature, take an integrated approach...

...It would not take much effort for him to focus public attention on the seas, their problems and their opportunities...

...But the report of its death may prove an exaggeration...

...policy and policy-making...

...These recommendations are the consequence of a process that is itself unprecedented in American history, so that at their May meeting the bishops will not follow custom but will establish it...

...Indeed, many believe there is a good chance ,that this year's May-July session of the Conference will see the end of tiffs valiant effort to reach agreement on a comprehensive law of the sea treaty...

...As a direct result of his speech, the Assembly established a Seabed Committee which spent six years trying to come to grips with the complexities of the law of the sea...

...Anyone who has read accounts of ,that conference knows that it was the culmination of an immense amount of planning, thought and work, involving Catholics across the country from almost every level and sector of our society...

...law of the sea delegation suggests that that kind of reappraisal may be in the works...

...Although the hour is very late, a major Carter initiative in this policy area could be a turning point in internation.al politics, making a major contribution to the solution of problems of peace, development, arms control and protection of the human environment...

...There have been, for example, more applications for press credentials than for any previous general meeting of the bishops...

...The Commission is made up of prominent West Europeans, Japanese, Canadians and Americans...

...Indeed, future hisCommonweal: 265 torians may say that April 13, 1976, marked the beginning of the end of the Law of the Sea Conference...

...The tremendous interest in last summer's "Operation Sail" suggests that potential...

...Grants from the World Common Heritage Fund could make a major contribution to dealing with this very serious problem...

...However, one can reasonably infer that the new administration will make a searching reexamination of our sea policy...

...If Jimmy Carter makes an in-depth analysis of national positions he will find that not a few of the grabbers are schizophrenic, genuinely sorrowful that Pardo's vision of the oceans as the common heritage has been all but abandoned...

...CARTER'S OCEAN OPPORTUNITY JOHN J. LOGUE Needed: A fresh and searching look at a crisis situation As President Carter gets into his presidency there is intense speculation as to the specific foreign policies he will pursue: in the Middle East, on the limitation of strategic arms, in Southern Africa, on nuclear prolifera~ion, to name just a few policy areas...

...Ocean institutions of modest powers and jurisdiction might begin to do the same thing for the world, winning new power and responsibilities as they demonstrate their effectiveness...

...The participants understood that their advice would be considered seriously by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and .that their work would help inform and shape a five-year pastoral plan on justice...

...It was in early 1973 that the Administrative Committee of the NCCB decided that it would be proper and becoming that the Catholic Church in this country celebrate the national bicentennial with a program based on the theme of justice in the world...

...and Maurice Strong, the Canadian who launched the UN Environment program with such vigor...

...Unfortunately the United States played a major role in precipitating that wave of unilateralism...

...Out of that grew the "Liberty and Justice for All" program, the national hearings across the country and the Detroit conference...

...The coastal bloc may not be as solid as most observers believe...

...But there is a chance that a new U.S...

...In that four-hour address he stressed the great dangers and great opportunities inherent in the ocean question...

...It could also assist developing countries in getting--and masteringn the marine technologies which are so important to their economic development...

...A special "intersessional" meeting on the subject will be held in Geneva in early spring...

...For, under siege by Governor Reagan in the G.O.P...

...After all, there are 153 other nations in the Law of the Sea Conference and the conventional wisdom is that in that Conference an American initiative is something to oppose rather than to support...

...But reflection will suggest that, though difficult to achieve, that common heritage sharing is the key to a successful treaty and all the good that can follow from it...

...First, it must have substance, i.e., it must provide a substantial amount of ocean revenue...

...Third, it must be based on mineral revenue alone...

...Ambassador .to the United Nations...

...primaries, the President defied his State and Defense Departments and executed a 180-degree turn in U.S...

...It is a job that the Nixon and Ford administrations did not even begin...

...They realize that the central demand of the "ocean haves," the 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), would give the greatest proportion of ocean wealth to a few coastal states...

...A bold law of the sea proposal by President Carter could be a major breakthrough in the struggle to achieve peace, economic development and a safe world environment...

...An international .seabed authority is in prospect with real authority over the exploitation of the deep ocean...

...To take but one example: while the Conference has spent years talking about pollution of the oceans by ships and by oil rigs, it has before it no positive proposals to deal with what is by far the most important source of ocean pollution: pollution from the land...

...David Knox, a prominent member of the British Parliament...

...Some are even demanding a 200-mile territorial sea which would torpedo freedom of navigation...

...Needless to say, building interest i n things nautical is not the same thing as building support for specific policies...

...In fact, the reverse may be true...

...And all too often these foreign policy problems and "solutions" are approached--or seem to be approached---separately, giving the impression that .they are not really related to each other...

...A well-organized White House Conference on Ocean Policy could make a major contribution to developing ocean consciousness throughout American society...

...In those areas success depends on too many external factors...

...A major address at the Naval Academy, his alma mater, a White House dinner for Thor Heyerdahl, Jacques Cousteau and others concerned with the survival of the ocean, a visit to the Law of the Sea Conference, a paragraph or two in the State of the Union Address--these would suggest that the new President is deeply interested in an urgent, complex and fascinating problem: the fate of the oceans...

...There is a possibility that the coming Geneva meetings will see a reconciliation of the very different positions of the developed and developing countries...

...The Detroit conference has been widely reported...

...SECOND CALL TO ACTION JAMES FINN National attention turns to the bishops" meeting In one of the regional hearings of the bicentennial program sponsored by the Catholic bishops of Amerioa, a small girl got up to testify...

...An adequate treaty must, by its definition, relate to and help bring order to the complex and everchanging ocean environment and the many conflicting uses of ocean space...

...The EEZ grab has infected the whole Conference with a spirit of nationalism and selfishness...

...Institution-building can make a major contribution to word order...

...The fight over offshore resources gets less attention than the worthy-- and very diffficult---effort to establish institutions to regulate the exploitation of the mineral wealth of the deep ocean...

...The ocean question came to center stage in the fall of 1967 with the famous speech of Ambassador Arvid Pardo of Malta in the UN General Assembly...

...Though difficult, that job of winning public support is by no means impossible...

...There is little reason to doubt that he could find first-class figures from many fields to serve on it...

...But when "in the late 1960s, the dam gave way, so to speak, and in the rush and ferment that ensued there broke on Catholic consciousness the unsettling fact that the Church did not have answers to all questions, that there are questions to which no human source can supply an answer, confidence in the Church's reliability began to crumble...

...Because they usually require substantial funding, programs in those areas are hard to sell, whether to the American people, to the Congress, to our allies or to the other nations in the word community...

...Most law of the sea "experts" will tell you that offshore sharing is dead and has been so since the 1974 Caracas session of the Conference...

...Carter's choice of Elliot Richardson, an early ocean internationalist, to head up the U.S...

...In late 1973 that Committee gave way to the 154-nation United Nations Conference on the Law of the "Sea...

...Such a plan must fulfill four conditions...

...Another special thing about law of the sea policy is that, if it is to be effective, it must promote "institutionalization," i.e., the development of one or more new international institutions with significant powers and jurisdictions...

...Because of its "graduated sharing" formula, such a plan should be easy for the Third World to accept and difficult for the developed world to agree to...

...Let us hope that our new President will grab the initiative before it is too late...

...At exactly that time, in early 1973, John Tracy Ellis assayed the state of American Catholicism in the pages of this journal...

...They see--and say--that, in fact, it will widen the "development gap," not narrow it...

...Equally likely is a "giveaway treaty" combining absolute clarity about the property rights of long coastline states to trillions of dollars of offshore mineral wealth with calculated vagueness as to all other rights--and duties...

...The job of gaining public support will be an immense one...

...A decision to adopt real common heritage sharing would change the whole psychology of the Conference...

...Indeed, it is quite possible that many states would not ratify such a giveaway treaty...

...The hour is 1.ate...

...With the Trilateral Commission's or some other kind of sharing proposal it may still be possible to turn the Conference around and put it back on the common heritage track...

...I hope that spirit permeates my comments on the future of that bicentennial program...

...With the right kind of proposal it might be possible to get broad support in most parts of the ~vorld...

...To stress the unique characteristics of law of the sea policy is not to underestimate the difficulties President Carter will have in devising proper proposals and in winning support for them in the Congress, the country and in the Law of the Sea Conference itself...

...In January he gave six lectures on the law of the sea at the University of Nairobi...

...The 51 nations in the "Group of Landlocked and Geographically Disadvantaged States," most of them from the Third World, are articulating the indignation of the ocean "havenots...

...But if, which seems probable, coastal states are successful in grabbing all---or almost all the offshore oil and gas, then, as Pardo said last June, the development gap will get wider...

...It could do much to break the present inpasse between East and West and between North and South...

...ocean policies we should encourage all countries----and especially Third World countries--to do the same...

...Their ingenious proposal, part of a 1200-word "'Barba Negra Appeal," provides that a certain portion---one to 20 percent, depending on per capita income---of the mineral revenues within each coastal state's economic zone be given to a Word Common Heritage Fund...

...Many delegates are demanding that coastal states get total jurisdiction not only over resources but also over environmental regulations, dispute settlement and marine research...

...But to grasp fully the boldness and the vision that launched this process, one must recall the state of the Church in this country when the idea developed...

...The Barba Negra Formula would require a moderating of the greed of the "big gainers" among the developed countries, e.g., the U.S., the USSR, Canada, Australia, Norway and South Africa...

...But in one important policy area, law of the sea, there is almost no public discussion...

...The reason for this surge of interest is not that the bishops of this country have suddenly become more popular, but that they are going to consider recommendations derived from the Detroit "Call to Action" conference of October...

...And revenues from the trillions of dollars of seabed minerals can and should be an important source of assistance in each of these problem areas...

...Indeed it may not even get the necessary number of ratifications...

...One plan which meets all four of these specifications is the so-called "'Barba Negra Formula" proposed last summer by a company of diplomats and private citizens who sailed an 80-year-old square-rigger some sixty miles from the United Nations out into the Atlantic...

...An inadequate law of the sea treaty will come apart...

...In most of them there are important voices urging a more international approach to the law of the sea...

...Yet in that area there are the ingredients for a spectacular successmand an equally spectacular failure...

...Indeed a UN study released last September says we can expect by the late 1980s only about $150,000,000 a year from deep ocean resources...

...One cannot, of course, say that all members of the Commission are bound by each recommendation of the Ocean Report...

...In the 183 years that have passed since the American Church was formally organized," he wrote, "the Catholic community has experienced a fair share of crisis and untoward movements, but that community has never known anything to approximate its present dispiritedness and disarray...

...And an impressive number of Catholic organizations and individuals have tried publicly to bring an outline of their own deep interests into focus with what they hope that meeting will accomplish...

...It would be foolish to suggest that a bold law of the sea initiative by President Carter would stampede the Conference in support of his policies...

...policy...

...There are several "special things" about law of the sea policy, i.e., special reasons which explain why it can have a major impaot--positive or negative---on international politics...

...The figure is from a General Accounting Office study...

...And, fourth, it must award most but not all of the mineral resources to the coastal state...

...However, there is general agreement Commonweal: 267 that deep ocean minerals will contribute very little to the common ~heritage...

...We have not understood this...

...A willingness to share ocean resources could encourage a willingness to share jurisdiction over other ocean problems...

...Because of the way they approached the Conference, i.e., privately, selectively, spasmodically, U.S...

...All .too often the solutions are temporary, subject to changes in personalities and/or perceptions in the governments, including our own, which have negotiated 29 April 1977:266 them...

...This article has purposely concentrated on only one substantive aspect of law of the sea policy: sharing a significant portion of the immense mineral treasure of the oceans...

...One hopes that our new President will see that, properly approached, law of the sea policy can become a--perhaps the--major catalyst for peace and economic and social justice...

...Early in 1976 a study of the Trilateral Commission suggested that wealthy states share as much as 50 percent of their 12-to-200 mile offshore mineral wealth with the international community...

...But it helps...

...He has made the whole world interested in his tiny home town, Plains, Georgia...

...Other Nations What about .the rest of the world...

...It seems perfectly clear that even if, which is doubtful, developed countries can be argued into buying the technology which is required to curb that pollution, Third World countries cannot...

...But there is one reason to believe that reflection--and guilt feelings---could win these nations over...

...What is needed most is a fresh and searching look at the great ocean crisis the world faces and the opportuni,ties as well as the dangers inherent in that crisis...

...If we don't love one another, one another won't love us...

...In the middle of a seven-week New York session of the Conference he endorsed a bill declaring that on March 1, 1977, the United States will have jurisdiction over 25 percent of all the fish in the world...

...I JAMES FIS~, Jormerly an editor o! Commonweal, is now editor oJ Worldview, a monthly journal devoted to morality and politics...

...The amount each state would contribute would be in proportion to its per capita income...

...For certain Third World states preach the "exclusive economic zone" with religious fervor...

...In both houses of Congress and on both sides of the aisle there are ocean internationalists who fought for a sound law of the sea policy even though Gerald Ford was throwing in the towel...

...We may soon learn that if we persist in grabbing all the immensely valuable mineral resources out to 200 miles we will not be able to stop other nations from grabbing complete control over research, pollution, dispute settlement--and even navigat i o n - i n that same 200-mile zone...

...That financing-tapping some of the trillions of dollars of offshore mineral wealth---could make a major contribution to peace and development as well as to preserving the marine environment...

...law of .the sea policy has tended to be erratic and changeable, reflecting no broad vision, no unifying concept or ideal, and having almost no public interest constituency...

...The attention aroused by the meeting the American Catholic bishops will hold in May is unprecedented...

...Thus, among those who subsequently endorsed the Barba Negra Appeal and its sharing formula were Ambassador Pardo, ocean explorer and anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl of Norway...

...The new administration should start by realizing that ocean problems have a great potential for dramatization...

...A third special thing about law of the sea is that it is perhaps the only area of international cooperation which can provide substantial self-generated financing, financing substar~fial enough to make a difference in a number of important policy areas...

...And as we Americans "think anew" our JOHN J. LOGUE is Director o] the Worm Order Research Institute at Villa,nova University and editor o] the recent book, The Fate of the Oceans...

...Among the latter when the report was issued were Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Cyrus Vance, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Harold Brownmthe top five foreign policymakers in the Carter administration...

...They refuse to believe the speakers who urge that this grab is "good for mankind," or "good for the Third World...

...The outcome of this program is still uncertain, resting as heavily as it does on the wisdom, the openness, the energy, and the judgment of .the bishops...

...Charles Yost, former U.S...

...They couldmand shouldmmake East and West and North and South co-workers in an important common undertaking...

...The revenues from this 12 to 200-mile economic zone would be used by the Word Ocean Authority to aid development, to fight pollution and--a small amount---to subsidize such UN functions as peacekeeping...

...And what Jimmy Carter does or does not do on law of the sea will have more influence than the actions of any other individual...

...It is the exact opposite of the virtuoso "Lone Ranger" performances so characteristic of Secretary Kissinger...

...Such a treaty is a far cry from the vision of the oceans as "the common heritage of mankind," articulated so eloquently by Ambassador Pardo in his 1967 address...

...The Conference--and the bright promise it represents--may well capsize unless there is a new beginning...

...The first special thing is that to be effective a law of the sea policy must take an integrated approach to ocean problems...

...For not only is the overwhelming proportion of exploitable mineral wealth within 200 miles of shore but most of it is off the shores of a relatively few states...

...For three years, in five sessions, that giant Conference has been dealing with the whole range of ocean questions, e.g., navigation, pollution, title to fish and minerals, armaments, etc...

...And there are a few public interest groups who fought the good fight even though the odds seemed hopeless...

...And .then our delegate returned to the Conference to urge an international approach to law of the sea problems[ Not surprisingly, American unilateralism triggered unilateralism in other important countries, e.g., Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the European Economic Community and, in mid-January, in India and Sri Lanka, the home of Ambassador H. S. Amerasinghe, the Presidem of the Law of the Sea Conference...

...That community grew and flourished in this country, accepting almost without question the teaching authority of the Church under conditions which made it easy to assume that the Church had an answer for every question...

...Jan Tinbergen, the Nobel Prize-winning Dutch economist...

...Monsignor Ellis gave partial explanations for the "confusion and uncertainty that now bedevil the Catholic community...

...Many nations have become very disillusioned with the Conference and especially with the rhetorical phrases which have been used to justify the coming grab of "the ocean commons" by a few states, half of them already rich...

...The failure of U.S...

...These special requirements of the law of the sea policy, i.e., of a wise law of the sea policy, mark it as something quite different from most other policy areas...

...To develop such support, the new President should create a Presidential Commission on Law of the Sea Policy...

...But that new approach is not likely unless our policy-makers do some deep thinking about the na.ture of the ocean problem and ocean opportunity the world faces...

...Those two institutions have changed Western Europe from a bloody battleground into a workshop for peace and prosperity...

...But central to everything is presidential interest, presidential initiative, presidential support, and first-quality presidential appointments...

...They have not yet seen that the EEZ is incompatible with any meaningful implementation of the principle of the common heritage, another concept which they say they support...

...Neither President Nixon, nor President Ford, nor Secretary Kissinger could grasp the opportunities implicit in the giant Conference, the largest diplomatic meeting in history...

...Second, it must be a light burden or no burden for most Third World countries...