Who will speak for the seas?
The sea may look eternal and untouchable but human activity is doing enormous damage to our oceans. The Ocean Rights Coalition is calling for the oceans to be granted legal personality so that they can be properly protected.
The sun’s out, the schools are off, and half the country seems to be heading for the coast. The beaches fill up with buckets and spades, the seafront chippies do a roaring trade, and we gaze out over the glittering blue.
It all looks so permanent, doesn’t it? As if the sea, vast and eternal, could simply never change.
But look a little harder, and you’ll see a different story. Jellyfish blooms where there should be cod. Plastic snared in the wrackweed. Warnings against bathing, thanks to sewage overflows. And beyond the horizon, out of sight, deep wounds to coral reefs, fish stocks and underwater forests.
The question is becoming harder to ignore: if the sea could speak, what would it say?
In under two months time, at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France, a coalition of campaigners will try to answer just that. The Ocean Rights Coalition, an alliance of environmental groups, legal experts and scientists from the UK and beyond (Common Weal is a founding partner) make the case for something quietly revolutionary: granting personhood and rights to the ocean.
Not regulations. Not management targets. Rights.
It sounds outlandish at first – the sort of thing you might expect from a seminar in California, not a Scottish newspaper. But it’s an idea already taking root across the globe. Rivers in New Zealand and Ecuador have been granted legal personhood in recent years. These ecosystems can, through appointed guardians, defend themselves in court against exploitation or harm.
Now, the Ocean Rights Coalition wants the UK to catch up – and the timing could hardly be sharper.
Just last month, the Scottish Government came under fire after greenlighting new licences for offshore oil and gas in the North Sea. At the same time, reports surfaced that marine protected areas around the Hebrides and Shetland are being routinely damaged by trawling. Restaurants are being advised not to sell popular Atlantic fish due to overfishing causing decline. Across Britain, a wave of public anger has been building over raw sewage discharges, much of it ending up in coastal waters.
“The law treats the ocean as property — to be used, mined, drilled, fished and dumped into”
In other words, we are not short of evidence that the ocean could do with some legal protection — the kind that goes beyond a few politely worded guidelines.
The Ocean Rights Coalition isn’t proposing that the Atlantic should get a seat at Holyrood. We’re arguing that we need to rethink our entire relationship with the sea. If the ocean had rights — the right to exist, to flourish, to regenerate — then governments, corporations, and individuals would be legally bound to respect those rights. Damage would not just be regrettable. It would be unlawful.
It’s an idea with ancient roots. Indigenous communities have treated rivers, mountains and oceans as living beings for thousands of years. In Western legal systems, it’s newer — but it’s growing fast, pushed along by the uncomfortable fact that our current ways of doing things simply aren’t working.
Of course, the usual suspects are already scoffing. 'More red tape!' cry the lobbyists. 'The death of industry!' warn the columnists. Some point out, not without reason, that it’s hard enough enforcing existing laws on marine protection, let alone inventing new ones.
The Coalition’s point is simple: what we’re doing now isn’t enough. The law treats the ocean as property — to be used, mined, drilled, fished and dumped into. When the system does fail, when a fishing ground collapses or an oil spill blackens a coastline, it’s the polluters who can afford the best lawyers.
Giving the ocean legal rights wouldn’t fix everything overnight. It would shift the burden. It would put the health of the sea at the centre of decision-making, not leave it as an afterthought. It would give a voice — through human guardians — to a part of the world that sustains all life, but can’t speak for itself.
It would mean that when new oil fields are proposed, or deep-sea mining looms, or chemical waste is piped out into the Firth of Forth, the ocean’s interests would have to be heard in court — not just in the court of public opinion.
It’s easy to be cynical. Easy to think that the sea is too big to break, that nature always finds a way, that all this is someone else’s problem. The uncomfortable truth is that the seas around Britain are among the most over-exploited on Earth. The North Sea alone has lost around 95 per cent of its oyster reefs. Cod stocks are a fraction of what they once were. The deep mud habitats off Scotland’s west coast — vital carbon sinks — are being ripped up for scallops.
When you look at it that way, asking for rights for the ocean doesn’t seem so outlandish. It seems like the least we could do. This summer, as we bask on the beaches and dive into the surf, it’s worth remembering: the sea gives us life. Oxygen. Food. Coolness. Joy.
The question is, what will we give back?
Michaela Girvan is a legal anthropologist specialising in International Environmental Law, Co-Founder of The Ocean Rights Coalition and Common Weal’s newly appointed lead representative to the UNFCCC, the UN's Climate Change Convention