Cymie R. Payne is an associate professor in the Department of Human Ecology and the Law School at Rutgers University. She has represented the interests of the international community in the marine environment as legal counsel before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, on behalf of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and has provided expert advice before the International Court of Justice and other international courts.
It may come as a surprise to fellow land-dwellers, but the ocean actually accounts for most of the habitable space on our planet. Yet a big chunk of it has been left largely unmanaged. It’s a vast global common resource, and the focus of a new treaty called the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) agreement. […]
