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| Marine Matters: A National Ocean Policy in the Making | | 11/5/2009 9:20:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
by Melissa Waterman
Feature Writer
Hey! Want to influence the future management of this country's fish, offshore oil and gas deposits, shipping lanes and water quality? Then go to the White House Council on Environmental Quality Web site and put in your two cents on the recently released "Interim Report on the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force." The title is resoundingly dull but the content is not. In it, the task force members say quite clearly to the Obama administration how the oceans should be managed by the government in the future.
This past June, President Obama established the 24-member task force in order to develop a national policy on the country's oceans. You might think that because we are a maritime nation, protected from the rest of the world by two oceans, with an economic history long tied to marine resources, we would have some sort of a coherent policy on how we manage those tracts of sea within the nation's purview.
Nope. Never have. The waters and submerged lands of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes are under the regulatory authority of myriad federal agencies. A partial list of who has dibs in the sea would include the Department of Defense, Army Corps of Engineers, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Interior, Coast Guard and half a dozen more. In addition, each state and all tribal authorities also have some jurisdiction.
So Obama said to the flock of federal agencies with their toes in the water, "Develop a recommendation for a national policy that ensures protection, maintenance and restoration of oceans, our coasts and the Great Lakes." Led by Nancy Sutley, the head of the Council on Environmental Quality, the task force met five times since June. They reviewed the reports produced by the Bush administration's Commission on Ocean Policy in 2004 and the Pew Ocean Commission's report of 2003. They held six meetings across the country and in the Pacific Islands to gather comments and suggestions from state marine management officials and nonprofit organizations. They set up a nifty Web site for citizens to make comments. And they finally came out with a report.
I'm not much for reports. They follow a basic premise: goal, objectives, implementation plan, measurable milestones. I rarely get past goal before dropping off into slumber despite sitting upright in a very hard chair. But I did find this one mildly interesting, in part because it acknowledges that there is such a thing as global climate change and that it will have a demonstrable effect on the country's oceans and coastal regions.
Hooray! About time.
The interim report states, in glorious government-ese, the national vision of the United States vis-à-vis its oceans: "An America whose stewardship ensures that the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes are healthy and resilient, safe and productive and understood and treasured so as to promote the well-being, prosperity and security of present and future generations." Then it goes on to list nine specific priorities that must be addressed through coordinated government action. Among these are to adopt ecosystem-based management as a foundational principle for the comprehensive management of the ocean; to strengthen and integrate federal and nonfederal ocean observing systems, sensors, and data collection platforms into a national system; and to strengthen the resiliency of coastal communities and marine and Great Lakes environments and their abilities to adapt to climate change impacts and ocean acidification.
Who could fault this? Sounds like motherhood and apple pie to me (and must be manna from heaven to the beleaguered Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System). As it turns out, 69 House members (59 Republicans and 10 Demo-crats) sent a letter to Nancy Sutley last week in which they criticized the report's recommendations.
The letter noted that the policies of the interim report focus on environmental stewardship while not sufficiently supporting economic development of ocean. "We are particularly concerned about the task force's impact on our nation's ability to safely develop its own offshore energy, including oil, natural gas and renewable energy," the letter said in part.
So perhaps you might want to take a few minutes to read the report yourself and write a comment of your own. The Web site is www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/oceans. It is not compelling reading, to be sure, but it is certainly timely.
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