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A panoramic view of the port city of Durban . . . Beyond the 200km limit, all the oceans belong to all countries of the world

Hildegarde The Arena
Slain American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jnr. once said: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

This “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity” played out very well in some quarters when President Mugabe recently attended the inaugural United Nations High-Level Conference on the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14 in New York, the United States of America.

The oddity was hearing the noise locals and outsiders made, claiming that Zimbabwe had no business at the Oceans Conference since it is a landlocked country.

A number of African states are landlocked, but they attended the conference, since 193 UN member-states were represented. It was okay for these African nations, and not for Zimbabwe?

Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi and his Environment, Water and Climate counterpart Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri dealt with these issues, making it clear that Zimbabwe had every right to attend, for apart from it being a UN member-state, it has since 1993 been party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

If all UN member-states were represented at the meeting, why should Zimbabwe have been the odd one out?

This forced this writer to revisit a 1973 publication edited by Richard N. Cooper titled “A Reordered World: Emerging International Economic Problems”.

Under the section, “Allocation of the World’s Resources”, there are two chapters by Evan Luard and Ann Hollick that give an illuminating perspective on the historical element on oceans.

Luard in his piece asks a pertinent question: “Who gets what on the seabed?” while Hollick makes an interesting claim: “Seabeds make strange politics.” And it did just that more than a week ago, when dust was raised because President Mugabe was among the Heads of State and Government that attended the Oceans Conference.

Hollick writes with special focus on the United States of America’s interests in ocean policy since the 1970s saying in part: “The ocean policy process involves a blend of domestic and foreign policy considerations . . .”

Thus arguing that just because Zimbabwe is landlocked and so shouldn’t have attended shows a failure to appreciate the variables that define a variety of geopolitical issues. As a member of the international community, if we cannot claim ownership of international waters, who will do it for us?

Apart from the natural resources in international waters, the same seas and oceans can be a security threat to landlocked countries, since they can be used as battlegrounds, with missiles fired towards those countries from those vast water bodies.

Luard gives an important framework that supports the attendance of that meeting, where the United Nations is central in his article. Below are snippets from the piece:

“Almost five years ago (around 1970), the United Nations began to discuss the issue of the seabed . . . Why has this question so far received so little publicity?

“It is possibly the most important issue that has ever come before the United Nations. It concerns, after all, the ownership and control of a substantial proportion of the earth’s wealth. The seabed covers 70 percent of the earth’s surface, and some believe it contains resources more valuable than those remaining on land. It is thus a major matter to know to whom they belong.”

If it was a contentious issue five decades ago, why should Zimbabwe, a UN member in its own right, watch from the terraces the goings-on in the international arena?

Despite being richly endowed with mineral resources, why should it also not lay its claim on the vast and valuable seabed resources?

Luard adds: “The resources are situated in an area that until recently had been regarded as no man’s land: an international zone beyond all national jurisdiction. But even if that were still universally accepted, what does it mean? Can anybody pick up what he can find on the sea floor, on the theory that finding is keeping (in legal terms, that the region is res nullius)? This would mean that only the most advanced nations, with advanced technologies, would be able to benefit.”

He also posed important questions that have seen the discourse on seabeds being a continuous narrative, not only for countries that are bordered by oceans and seas, but for all UN member states: “Does it mean that the resources should be regarded as international, belonging equally to all, to be exploited only on an internationally agreed-upon basis, perhaps under the direction of some international authority set up for the purpose? . . . The real question, given the size of the stakes and the sharply conflicting interests of different nations, is: Will it be possible to reach agreement at all? And if it is not possible, what then? . . . The rich countries, as well as the poor, will have to give as well as take if a viable seabed system is to come into operation.”

The two historical articles were not only important for the author to understand the politics and/or issues surrounding oceans and other water bodies, but it was an eye-opener since the general notion is that international waters and their resources are a preserve of a few powerful members of the international community.

Upon return from the UN, Ministers Mumbengegwi and Muchinguri-Kashiri drew the nation’s attention to the importance of being part of the Oceans Conference.

In a report by The Herald Editor Caesar Zvayi, the Foreign Affairs Minister bolstered a truism that has been at the centre of the debate all these years: ‘‘All the oceans belong to all countries of the world. The ones which have got shorelines, their territorial waters only go for 200km. After that we have as much right, as much stake as anyone else on this globe as to what happens on the high seas.”

He added: “They can’t just go there and dump waste, and dump all sorts of toxic materials and so on because we have a stake even though we are landlocked. That is where our rain comes from, that is where half of our oxygen comes from. It affects the whole world, so we have an interest, we have a stake that is why 193 countries were there.”

Minister Muchinguri-Kashiri also maintained: ‘‘I really think it’s crazy (that Zimbabwe shouldn’t have attended the conference). As I have already alluded to, 70 percent of all the Earth’s land is covered by oceans, and whatever is collected on land ends up in the oceans . . . The seas are very critical to us because of the blue economy that they serve. We get our fish protein from the oceans, also tourism, also trade. For us it’s very critical that we keep the seas clean and away from acidification because we survive from the oceans.’’