A Sea Change: Exclusive Economic Zones and Governance Institutions for Living Marine Resources (review)

It has now been more than two decades since the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, a landmark event that codified coastal states' authority to govern living marine resources within 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs). A Sea Change reflects upon the world's experience with this dramatic institutional change.

The volume first seeks to characterize the nature of institutional development in the wake of the creation of EEZs. It then addresses issues relating to analytical themes developed by Oran Young in conjunction with a broader research program with which this volume is associated.¹ These relate interplay among international, national and local institutions that were triggered by the creation of EEZs, and the fit between marine resource management regimes developed within and around EEZs and the biophysical systems in which such resources are embedded. The treatment of these themes in this volume remains largely descriptive; the volume simply depicts various forms and instances of interplay and makes observations of good or bad fit between institutional regimes and the ecosystems they seek to address.

The volume is divided into four sections. The first section includes an introduction and a legal assessment of the EEZ regime in its entirety. The second section focuses on a set of domestic cases that include Norway, the Russian Federation, Australia, the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, and the Trobiand Islands of Papua New Guinea. A third section focuses on regional cooperation strategies and includes a general assessment of regional fisheries organizations and case assessments of the South China Sea and the Pacific Islands. A final section on new directions contains a discussion of relevant workplans of the FAO and the World Summit on Sustainable Development, an assessment of the governance regimes of the Bering Sea, and a concluding chapter from the editors.

William Edeson, in the legal assessment, argues that the EEZ experience is generally successful on legal grounds; the principles that underpin the regime have not been subjected to significant legal challenges. An assessment of the EEZ regime's impact on management and conservation outcomes may reach a different conclusion, however, since most indicators suggest that the health of fish stocks and the efficiency of fisheries production have deteriorated significantly under an EEZ regime.

There are no clear causal relationships or general patterns of outcomes from the majority of the volume's case studies. If anything the cases underscore the causal complexity of the institutional relationships they examine. Some relationships are positive: in Norway national and international regimes work well together, and in the U.S. Pacific Northwest the same thing is true of national and local regimes. In some cases institutional instability cannot necessarily be attributed to the EEZ regime: in the Russian Federation the institutional instability can be traced primarily to the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and in Papua New Guinea there is also no discernable connection between instability and EEZ creation. Elsewhere—in the South China Sea—some management problems pertaining to regime fit are exacerbated by EEZ creation, but the same is not true of the Pacific Islands. Governance in the Bering Sea may have improved under an EEZ regime compared with the open access conditions that preceded it but Young suggests that a new meta-regime could provide a much better fit to this large marine ecosystem.

Are Sydes, one of the editors, does advance a few general claims with respect to regional fisheries organizations, suggesting that the role and significance of these organizations was largely diminished with the advent of EEZs. Developments such as the United Nations Straddling Fish Stocks Agreement have begun to reemphasize their importance, however. The volume also includes noteworthy overviews of important developments in the United Nations, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development that pertain to ocean governance.

The overall coherence of the volume suffers from the lack of a common structure across chapters. Each...