Measuring Customer Experience

42 The damming or diversion of rivers for power generation, flood control or irrigation purposes has resulted inter alia, in significant reduction and or changes in the timing of fresh water flow to the sea, reduced sediment flow into deltas and wetlands, and obliteration of fish spawning habitat. Impacts have been widespread to include fisheries reduction, loss of biodiversity, increased concentrations of pollutants, the salinization and subsidence of surrounding coastal lowlands, and the overall alteration of estuaries.

(g) Destruction of the Ozone Layer

There is today, a human-induced reduction in the stratospheric ozone layer which has allowed increased ultraviolet-B radiation to reach the earth‟s surface.⁹³ Study has revealed that this radiation can seriously affect human health and damages or kills fish eggs and larvae and tiny plank-tonic animals and plants which live in the surface of the sea.

(h) Global Climate Change

The human- induced global climate change with concomitant sea level rise, increased air and water temperatures, and changes in precipitation patterns is predicted to alter coastal and oceanic environments through a variety of direct and indirect impacts.

43 subject in war time to the laws of war. Freedom of the sea implies primarily that everyone/State has equal rights and access to the sea, while the concept of commonage signifies that the seas belong to every State and no State should appropriate any point of the sea as an indivisible part of its territorial domain. That status and that principle applied throughout the seas. However, exceptions, principally in favour of Coastal States, developed slowly, and historically, at least, were seen and resisted as carved out of the commonage, as derogations from freedom.⁹⁴ Gradually, zones of „national jurisdiction‟

for the Coastal State began to emerge: - the territorial sea, the continental shelf, the exclusive economic zone, creating distinctions between them and the rest of the seas and ascribing the latter the distinguishing label, the “high seas”.⁹⁵

Freedom of the sea had meant unfettered freedom to use the seas, so that no uses have been barred. It should be noted that the principal use of the seas has been navigation, fishing, trade, travel and war. In time, the seas began to lend themselves to tunneling, laying of cables, submarine travel and scientific research. In today‟s world as noted earlier in this work, the seas are a principal arena of military development, maneuver and harbor for sophisticated military weapons and equipment.⁹⁶ The seas have also recreational and scientific importance as already noted. They have been for a long time a repository for waste, recently also for atomic waste.

The notion of freedom also conceptualized the air above the seas and it too, has been open to all for aviation and its various uses and purposes. There has been no consensus, however, as to “who owns the seabed”, as whether the “commonage” of the

94L.Henkinet al, International Law Cases and Materials(2^nd edn, St.Paul Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1987) P.1231.

95All these jurisdictional zones will be discussed fully in the subsequent chapters of this work.

96Ibid.

44 seas applies as well to the seabed and its subsoil.⁹⁷ Some have urged that the seas are not subject to national appropriation solely because that would interfere with freedom, particularly for navigation, but there is no similar reason for denying national acquisition and sovereignty in the seabed and its subsoil. Such doubt would however, not be expressed in this present day. This is because the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982 has unequivocally declared the seabed, ocean floor and its subsoil beyond the limits of national jurisdiction as the common heritage of mankind. It follows therefore that all resources exploration and exploitation activities in the „Area‟

are to be carried out for the benefits of mankind as a whole taking into particular consideration the interest of developing countries. The UNCLOS has declared inter alia that no State shall claim or exercise sovereignty or sovereign rights over any part of the

„Area‟ or its resources, nor shall any State or natural or juridical person appropriate any part thereof.⁹⁸ The International Seabed Authority (ISA) was established to organize and control such activities and share the resulting benefits for the good of the entire mankind.

The terms “freedom” and “commonage” are complementary to each other. The reason is found on the ground that while freedom as a concept allows everyone free access to the seas, the concept of commonage restrains any nation from using the sea in a way that affects other nations‟ right as the co-owners of the seas.

The freedom of the seas and the principle that they belong to all, or no one has meant also freedom for all nations to exploit sea resources, principally to fish and to keep one‟s catch.⁹⁹ Those who held the view and insisted strictly that the seas were common property might hit hard point here explaining why individual nations have/could

97Ibid.

98UNCLOS, Section 2, Arts. 136 and 137 (1) – (3).

99L.Henkin,opcit, p.1236.

45 appropriate the fish that belonged to all. It has been suggested that such questions are merely theoretical, as fishing was older than international law, and no nation had any interest in insisting that fishing was generally prohibited. Besides, the fish reproduced themselves and seemed plentiful and inexhaustible.¹⁰⁰ Even when it is proved that fish were not in fact always and everywhere plentiful and inexhaustible, the freedom to fish in the seas at large survived unimpaired.