Ocean Nourishment - Ocean Nourishment and International Law

Ocean Nourishment and International Law

From the perspective of international law there are some dilemmas around iron, urea, or phosphorus fertilization of the ocean. On one hand the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 1992) has accepted mitigation actions. On the other hand, the UNFCCC and its revisions currently only recognise forestation and reforestation projects as carbon sinks and international law protects and preserves the marine environment. Some commercial companies like Climos and GreenSea Ventures, and the Australian based Ocean Nourishment Corporation, plan to engage in urea and iron fertilization projects. These companies invite green co-sponsors to finance their activities in return for provision of carbon credits to offset investors’ CO2 emissions.

In June 2007 the London Dumping Convention issued a statement of concern noting 'the potential for large scale ocean iron fertilization to have negative impacts on the marine environment and human health'. but the term 'large scale' was not defined. It is believed that large scale would refer to operations on the scale then planned by Planktos. Planktos is a USA-based company, which abandoned its plans to conduct 6 fertilzation cruises from 2007 to 2009, each of which would have dissolved up to 100 tons of iron over a 10,000 km2 area of ocean. The plans were abandoned because their ship Weatherbird II was refused entry to the port of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands where it was to take on provisions and scientific equipment. In 2008, the convention issued a non-binding resolution which states that ocean fertilization activities, other than legitimate scientific research, "should be considered as contrary to the aims of the Convention and Protocol and do not currently qualify for any exemption from the definition of dumping".

Working Group III of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change examined ocean fertilization methods in its fourth assessment report and noted that the field-study estimates of the amount of carbon removed per ton of iron is probably over-estimated by current studies and that other potential adverse effects have not yet been fully studied.