Protection, Preservation, and Conservation of Our Oceans

This book discusses the conservation, protection and preservation of oceans and the alignment of these efforts with the public investiture of trust and responsibility in State governments, stemming from practices originating in the seventeenth century. The public trust structure is embedded in natural law and general law, which follows the principle that the people hold inherent authority to form the State which, as the trustee, is bound to safeguard the interests of the people. The inflection point is the people's self-determination to exist as a State, and to institute a government formed to protect particular interests, such as the oceans. When applied to the oceans' resources, the aggregate trustee responsibility of States was enshrined in the 1958 United Nations Geneva Conventions on Law of the Sea and evolved yet again in the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, receiving further alterations in later treaties and conventions relating to space and the Antarctic. An assembled Oceans Public Trust is now required by Mankind as the aggregate beneficiary to ensure commitment to marine conservation, protection and preservation.