Original Instructions for the World Ocean: an Indigenist research agenda

Peter J. Jacques

Chapter 4 in A Research Agenda for Sustainable Ocean Governance, 2025, pp 39-50 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Original human people have a radically consistent set of what are sometimes called “Original Instructions.” Original Instructions make up laws that cannot be violated without massive, sometimes civilization-level consequences. These laws center on creating and maintaining good relations, not just between human groups but all people, which include plants, animals, land, air, and water. An Indigenist research agenda would ask questions about how to change the relations we have now governing the World Ocean, and why are these violations in place? Much of the history of human interactions with the World Ocean over the last 500 years is dominated by Enlightenment Liberalism, which assumes that only humans are people, and people take as much as they can, foregoing what consequences and costs they can. The internalized logic of this “rationalist” paradigm sets up international institutions and humans in these institutions to be takers, and what they take becomes a dead commodity without personhood. This is demonstrated in two central concepts that have governed the World Ocean: mare liberum, or freedom of the seas, and maximum sustainable yield. Neither one of these has resulted in sustainable relationships in a living ocean.

Keywords: Indigenist Thought; Rationalist Governance; MSY; Mare Liberum; Non-Human Persons (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035325740
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