With currently 140 laws and 20 agencies managing its oceans, US President Barack Obama has set out to draft a first comprehensive national policy within this area.
Naming a high-level Ocean Policy Task Force, Obama’s intention was to create a “comprehensive, integrated, ecosystem-based” framework for sustainably using the resources of US oceans, coasts and the Great Lakes. The plan would pull together all the different authorities and laws and focus attention on the problems and challenges facing the oceans, their riches and those who manage them. The United States has the largest ocean area of any country in the world.
The task force will be led by Nancy Sutley, President Obama’s main environmental policy adviser.
The move was cheered by US environmentalists, who meant it was long overdue.
“This is something that two US national commissions have called for,” said Sarah Chasis, director of the Ocean Initiative at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
“The Pew Oceans Commission and the US Commission on Ocean Policy in 2003 and 2004 came out and said we really need an ocean policy to bring together all the disparate authorities that manage our oceans and have a cohesive vision of what we want for the oceans and how to manage them,” Chasis told AFP, the French news agency.
President Obama took the opportunity to proclaim June “National Oceans Month”, and added that, with the new task force, “we are taking a more integrated and comprehensive approach to developing a national ocean policy that will guide us well into the future,”