Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Multiple examples suggest that the privileging of land-based “first-world” strategies of economically-driven environmental modeling victimizes the peoples of the Global South, indirectly placing the oceans of the entire planet in peril. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) and regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) along with a plethora of funding strategies from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the World Bank, UNEP, IPPC, etc. have received mixed reviews about their individual, let alone their collective, effectiveness. Furthermore, on a macro-political level, the rise of nation-state nativism has produced discursive fragmentation in formulating both a language and series of strategies as a common, effective environmental front. Through case study methodology that identifies the rapidly increasing rates of hypoxic (often referred to as “dead zones”) ocean areas as “canaries in the coal mine,” we will focus first on the emerging studies of hypoxic zones in both coastal waters and global oceans. We demonstrate the need for developing alternative strategies for increasing the coordination of effective approaches, both locally (Bay of Bengal) and globally, in the open ocean of the global south (across the tropical thermocline). Given the large populations in the global south who depend on ocean systems for survival, coordination of approaches to study impacts of deoxygenated zones are, thus, particularly necessary in these areas: we demonstrate the need for significant development of policy for dealing with the rapidly growing problem of deoxygenated areas in the global south and a more nuanced approach to designing marine protected areas (MPAs) as refugia during hypoxic events.