EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

‘Rational use’ in Antarctic waters

Jennifer Jacquet, Eli Blood-Patterson, Cassandra Brooks and David Ainley

Marine Policy, 2016, vol. 63, issue C, 28-34

Abstract: The Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CAMLR Convention) is the legal doctrine presiding over the exploitation of marine life in the Southern Ocean. At recent Commission (CCAMLR) meetings, some member states have interpreted the term ‘rational use’ in the Convention text as ‘the unrestricted right to fish' and, most recently, the term has been evoked in opposition to the establishment of marine protected areas. Tensions over interpretation of the term at CCAMLR are tracked and presented. The term's meaning and original intent are also explored in the publicly available record of treaty negotiations. According to negotiation documents as well as the CAMLR Convention, the term ‘rational use' does not imply an unconditional right to exploit marine life in the Southern Ocean. Like ‘scientific uncertainty,' which has also been evoked in ways that reflect social values, ‘rational use' should be seen as a value-laden term, rather than as an explicit mandate to fish.

Keywords: Antarctica; CCAMLR; Ecosystem based fishery management; Fisheries; Marine protected areas; Rational use; Southern Ocean; International environmental law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X15002821
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:marpol:v:63:y:2016:i:c:p:28-34

DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2015.09.031

Access Statistics for this article

Marine Policy is currently edited by Eddie Brown

More articles in Marine Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:marpol:v:63:y:2016:i:c:p:28-34