Elisabeth Mann Borgese and the Law of the Sea

Front matter

LEGAL HISTORY LIBRARY 59 - STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 23

Elisabeth Mann Borgese and the Law of the Sea

Tirza Meyer

Part 1

Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s Introduction to World and Ocean Governance 1918-67 ı Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s Introduction to World Governance 17

Noo ff WwW

Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s Life in Time-Lapse 17

Making Connections — An Intellectual Love with Giuseppe Antonio Borgese 19

The Chicago Committee to Frame a World Constitution 24 A New World Constitution 27

From Secretary to Academic 31

Retreat to Italy 34

The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara 36

2 3 4 no

How Free Are the Oceans? 41

Moving towards a New Law of the Sea 43

Nation States Reach Out for Territory in the Oceans 45 Access to Resources Makes Ocean Governance a Pressing Issue Post-War 50

Preparing for the First Convention on Ocean Governance 52 UNCLOS I — Defining Legal Concepts, 1958 53

UNCLOS II — Failing to Fill Out Legal Concepts, 1960 57

VIII CONTENTS

PART 2 Preparing for the Law of the Sea Convention 1967-73

3 The Maltese Initiative Changes Ocean Governance 63 1 Dipping into the Oceans — A Letter to Santa Barbara 63 2 APersonof Rare Vision? 66 3 Arvid Pardo — From Political Prisoner to Diplomat 72 4 The Maltese Initiative — Did Pardo Really Do It Single-Handedly? 75 Arvid Pardo’s Interest in Ocean Governance 77

O oI

Malta Prepares the Seabed Proposal 80 The Seabed Committee Is Born 83

4 Pacem in Maribus — A Think Tank for Ocean Questions 86 1 Can Santa Barbara Become a Think Tank for Ocean Questions? 86 2 Pacem in Maribus — An Ambitious Undertaking go 3 Reaching Out to the Seabed Committee 93 4 Discussions and Achievements of Pacem in Maribus 97 5 Defining Pressing Ocean Governance Problems 100

5 ‘The Ocean Regime’ and the ‘Draft Ocean Space Treaty’ 105 1 A Holistic Treaty — Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s ‘The Ocean Regime’ 105 2 An Ocean Regime through Participation mı 3 From Ocean Regime to World Regime? 116 4 Arvid Pardo’s Convictions and Visions for the Future 117 5 The Maltese ‘Draft Ocean Space Treaty’ 119 ı Malta's Struggle for Direction 125

2 Dom Mintoff — A Stumbling Block for Elisabeth Mann Borgese and Arvid Pardo? 128

3 Arvid Pardo’s Demotion from Ambassador to Seabed Delegate 130

4 Big Plans for Malta — Establishing the International Ocean Institute 133

5 Dreaming about the Headquarters of the Ocean Regime on Malta 137

6 Review of Networks and Re-Grouping to Face UNCLOS III 142

CONTENTS IX

PART 3 Negotiating the Law of the Sea 1973-82 1 The World Order Complicates Ocean Governance Negotiations 151

2 The Structure of the Negotiations — Solving a Giant Jigsaw Puzzle through Consensus 157

3 Navigating Interests — Groups as the Unofficial Structure of UNCLOS III 160

4 Entering the Conferences — The International Ocean Institute Gains Non-Governmental Organisation Status 164

5 APiece for the Ocean Puzzle — How to Design an International Machinery to Govern the Ocean Floor? 167

6 Malta’s Failed Attempt to Regain Importance 170 Final Fall-Out with Malta over the International Seabed Authority 175

8 AStrong International Machinery for the Seabed Outside National Jurisdiction? 181 1 Non-Governmental Organisations Struggle at the Convention 181 Moving over to the Austrian Delegation 184 How to Exploit the Seabed? 186 Preparing for the Sixth Session in 1977 189 op won

Reviving a Corpse? — Attempts to Reintroduce Rejected Concepts 192 Secret Changes to the Draft Treaty in Favour of the Developing an

Countries 194

7 New Strategies and Alliances for Landlocked and Geographically Disadvantaged States 196

8 Austria Loses Faith — An Era of Instability 198

1 A New Headquarters in Halifax 201

2 Austria’s Report on Jens Evensen’s Intersessional Meeting — Visions Falling Apart 203

3 Losing the President of the Law of the Sea Convention Causes a Crisis 207

4 United States’ Retreat Stalls the Negotiations 210

5 Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s Appeal to Act without the United States 213

CONTENTS

Why the Rush to Finalise the Convention in1980? 217 Moving on in Halifax — The Second International Ocean Institute 220 Shedding Crocodile Tears? A Law of the Sea without the United States 222

PART 4 Can the Common Heritage of Mankind Be Rescued? 1982-94

1 2

The Life of the Convention after1982 229 The Boat Paper — A Betrayal of the Task? 234 The Law of the Sea Kidnapped by Villains in 1994 239

CON DW

Elisabeth Mann Borgese as the ‘realist of tomorrow’ 243

The Origins of Mann Borgese’s Internationalist Ideals 244

Arvid Pardo and a Meeting of Ideals 246

The Time Was Ripe - Political and Technological Development in the Mid-Twentieth Century 247

Common Heritage or Common Property 250

The Idea in Action through Institution-Building 251

Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s Legacy 253

Epilogue — The Future of Ocean Governance — What Is Next? 256

Archival Material 261 Bibliography 269 Index 279

Foreword

Elisabeth Mann Borgese (1918-2002) proved courageous enough to peer into the future and imagine it in her own terms. An idealist dedicated to pursing economic justice, she found in the oceans a space that invited new, even radical concepts of just governance. In this welcome contribution to the history of international law and to ocean history, Tirza Meyer interweaves the story of Mann Borgese’s remarkable life with an account of the negotiations that led to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, concluded in 1982. The daughter of the Nobel Prize-winning German author Thomas Mann and a mother, Katia, with Jewish ancestry, Mann Borgese was displaced with her family when the Nazi Party seized power, becoming first a citizen of Czechoslovakia in 1936, then of the United States in 1941, and finally of Canada in 1983 after she became a professor of political science at Dalhousie University.

Through her husband, Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, a professor of Romance literature and languages, Mann Borgese joined a group of academics at the University of Chicago, many political refugees, that drafted a “World Constitution” proposing to replace nation states with a single federal system. It was published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1948, reflecting concerns about strident nationalism and Cold War tensions leading to nuclear annihilation. Although politically unrealistic, the draft articulated principles that Mann Borgese worked to transform into reality for the rest of her life, including the idea that the life-giving resources of air, water, earth and energy were the common property of all humans. A 1964 opportunity to work in a new institution, the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California, directed her attention to the possibility that the ocean might be a promising setting for the cultivation of internationalism and world governance. Meyer presents intriguing evidence that in 1967 Mann Borgese may have been attracted to on-going ocean governance negotiations by a vision of science and technology promising to tap new sources of wealth in the oceans that might be deployed to feed the hungry, aid underdeveloped nations, and enable effective international governance.

Such a vision was shortly thereafter presented to the UN General Assembly by the Maltese Ambassador, Arvid Pardo, in his famous November 1967 speech proposing that the ocean's resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction be declared the “Common Heritage of Mankind” (now referred to as the Common Heritage of Humankind). Pardo’s proposal rekindled international law of the sea negotiations, begun with the first UN Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1958 and extended fairly unsuccessfully in a second conference in 1960. Mann

XII FOREWORD

Borgese, newly following the events associated with Law of the Sea, lost no time in contacting Pardo after his speech and inviting him to Santa Barbara. Their initial meetings set the stage for the influential Pacem in Maribus conferences, which provided informal opportunities for those involved in Law of the Sea negotiations to discuss proposals in the hopes of incorporating internationalist ideals.

Mann Borgese worked tirelessly trying to insert idealistic elements into Law of the Sea, especially ones promoting world governance and economic justice, long after Pardo stepped away from the fray. Meyer argues that Mann Borgese’s legacy includes the International Ocean Institute, which she founded in 1972, the same year that the Third UN Conference on Law of the Sea opened. The institute continues to carry forward her vision and work, although it did not, as she dreamed, become a UN institution to govern the world oceans or an implement for collecting wealth from newly accessible ocean resources to equalize an unequal world. While the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, concluded in 1982, articulated the common heritage principle, that ideal was eroded by the provisions negotiated between then and 1994 to persuade the United States and other industrialized nations to accept the treaty. Nevertheless, Meyer presents Mann Borgese as an exemplar of determination, a quality she balanced with flexibility in shifting strategies as needed to pursue her goals. Her precise influence on Law of the Sea is debatable as many of her ideals failed to be incorporated into it and she herself could be a polarizing figure, but her story draws attention to the importance of paying attention to individuals as well as non-governmental institutions and other non-state actors in this history. It also demonstrates the value of accounts of Law of the Sea written by historians drawing upon extensive archival research to complement the many works penned by participants in the negotiations and by legal scholars, both of which tend to offer teleological accounts documenting the path to final outcomes rather than telling a fuller story.

Concluding the Law of the Sea Treaty required international cooperation and assent. It involved as well a collective imagining of the future in terms of anticipated technological advancements that might draw wealth from oceans, predicted geopolitical conflicts and alliances, and also idealized hopes for greater justice, equality, and peace. Meyer rightly points out that, in the present moment with the ocean’s heightened environmental and geopolitical importance, Mann Borgese’s attention to questions of justice and injustice, and to the promise of internationalism, render her writings and her life a resource for the present and future.

Helen M. Rozwadowski

Preface

Before diving into the story of Elisabeth Mann Borgese and the Law of the Sea, it is important to clarify the use of terminology in this book. The attentive reader will find several terms that are today either outdated or debated. These include the term common heritage of mankind, along with references to developed, developing, industrialised and third world countries. For some of these terms, researchers and the international community at the United Nations have not yet agreed universal modern alternatives.

The term third world has been abolished because it suggests a global hierarchy of first, second and third-class countries. It appears just once in this book followed by an explanatory footnote. However, the division of countries into developing and developed is still widely used both in this book and in general. For instance, the UN has the ‘United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS)\! Some countries that fall into the developing category may also like to use the term because it has financial implications for them. However, this way of dividing up the world is problematic because it suggests that there is only one narrow type of development: that of the industrialised western societies that are mainly in the global north and often have colonial pasts. But who is to say that there is only one kind of ‘good’ development? In 2015, the World Bank announced that it was phasing out the terms in favour of dealing with regions and income groups,” but I could not make the same choice in this book for a variety of reasons.

The book’s main events took place between the 1960s and 1980s, and this is reflected in the language used in the archival material and other sources. For those living at the time, the world was very much divided into a ‘communist’ east, a ‘developing’ south and an ‘industrialised’ north-west. This affected how people spoke to each other and what kinds of challenges they felt needed to be solved. During the UNCLOs negotiations, the issue of justice for less industrially developed former colonies was keenly debated. UN delegates and the public used these terms to describe the differences between world regions, and

1 United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS). https:// www.un.org/ohrils/.

2 Tariq Khokhar, Umar Serajuddin, ‘Should we continue to use the term “developing world”?, World Bank Blogs, 16 November 2015, available at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/ should-we-continue-use-term-developing-world.

XIV PREFACE for the sake of clarity and readability I have made the conscious choice to stick to the established terms. There are also no widely agreed alternatives, as shown by the fact that the UN still uses these terms.

In the case of the common heritage of mankind, I had the option of using the more gender-neutral term, ‘common heritage of humankind’ which many recent scholars have begun to favour. However, this book follows the evolution of the Law of the Sea, and the language and terminology of the law text is a key part of this. Who ‘mankind’ is and who this ‘common heritage’ applies to are very interesting questions, and it’s important to note that to this day the term common heritage of mankind is the one inscribed in the Law of the Sea. In any discussion about the modern meaning of the common heritage principle, I would have used the gender neutral version, but since this book is a history, I have stuck to the historically used term for the sake of readability and clarity. Finally, we need to keep in mind that — gender neutral or not — the term is loaded with ambiguous meaning and symbolism. What implications does it have for humankind’s action on this planet if we see ourselves as the sole heirs to every being and everything on Earth? In the future, we will have to find answers to this question.

Acknowledgments

This book is a refined version of my dissertation that was the result of my PhD project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. The research was made possible through the generous funding by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Strategic Research Area — NTNU Oceans with director Siri Granum Carson and the Faculty of Humanities.

I would like to express my great appreciation to my former supervisors Hakon With Andersen and Thomas Brandt for their steady support, great advice and patient guidance. Your expertise has been invaluable. I also wish to express my gratitude towards Helen M. Rozwadowski and Peder Roberts who were on the evaluation committee of my doctoral thesis. I thank you for encouraging me to turn my dissertation into a book and for your assistance in the process. A special thanks is due to Helen, who gratiously agreed to write the foreword to this book.

All my colleagues and friends at the 3ROceans project group at NTNU deserve special thanks for their encouragement and support. The group has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration and joy. I would like to thank Mats Ingulstad and Gard Paulsen, Knut Ove Eliassen, Kim Ménage, Christopher Messelt and Widar Aalrust Kristoffersen. My grateful thanks are extended to all my former colleagues at the Department of Historical and Classical Studies and the Department of Modern History and Society at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology for their support. The Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH in Stockholm deserves my gratitude for warmly welcoming me and giving me a space to continue my work on ocean related questions that are inspired by this book.

Rosemary Rayfuse and Lucas Lixinski have offered me the great opportunity to visit the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. Thank you for your guidance and hospitality. I also want to thank Shirley Scott from UNSW Canberra for her useful and constructive recommendations on my project.

I want to extend my gratitude to the Deep Sea Mining Pilot project group at NTNU Oceans for giving me the great opportunity to contribute a humanistic approach to an interdisciplinary project. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the Reading Group of the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities for helping me to polish the framework of this book to make it accessible for a wider audience.

I am particular thankful for the assistance given by the staff of the International Ocean Institute in Halifax and the International Ocean Institute Headquarters in Malta for connecting me with important interview partners,

XVI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS helping me to find research material and offering me to use their workspaces for interviews and reading during my visits in Malta and Halifax. I would like to offer my special thanks to Madeleine Coffen-Smout from the 101 in Halifax for her speedy help and guidance. Thank you for sharing with me your profound knowledge about Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s network and connecting me with important people. I also wish to acknowledge the help provided by Antonella Vassallo, at the 101 in Malta, who has been likewise resourceful in finding the right people and providing me with valuable material from the 101 library.

Very special thanks is due to my interviewees and informants, who have been generous with their time and open and willingly shared with me important and valuable information about the life of Elisabeth Mann Borgese and UNCLOS III. I would like to thank Francois Bailet, Nica Borgese, H. E. Saviour Borg, Aldo Chircop, Anita Coady, Catherine Enright, Nikolaus Gelpke, Tommy Koh, Ian McAllister and Hugh Williamson.

My special thanks are extended to the staff at Dalhousie University Archives in Halifax for their resourcefulness, helpful advice and for extending their opening hours in order for me to be able to view all the materials I had on my list. I would also like to thank David Attard for making me aware of the International Maritime Law Institute — Pardo Archives, where I could find some essential information about Arvid Pardo that was not available elsewhere. I would also like to thank the staff of the United-Nations Archive, in New York City, the staff of the Literaturarchiv der Monacensia in Munich and the Thomas-Mann-Archive in Ziirich for providing me with speedy information, access and excellent help and guidance whenever I could not find a dearly needed document. My grateful thanks are extended to Nica Borgese, who has been so kind to invite me into her home and provide me with documents of her mother that were not available elsewhere.

I would like to thank photographer and film maker Wolf Gaudlitz for allowing me to use one of his famous portraits of Elisabeth Mann Borgese for the cover of this book. I am grateful for the support and guidance I received by the publishing team at Brill/Martinus Nijhoff. My proofreader Joly Braime deserves my gratitude. All remaining errors are mine.Finally, I want to thank my family and partner, who have encouraged me whenever I needed support.

Oslo, October 2021

Figures

1 Elisabeth Mann Borgese in New York in front of the United Nations Building/ Monacensia Literaturarchiv und Bibliothek, EMB F 179. Photo: unknown 4

2 Elisabeth Mann Borgese with her husband in Chicago 1943. Monacensia Literaturarchiv und Bibliothek München, EMB F 203. Photo: unknown 24

3 Elisabeth Mann Borgese at Pacem in Maribus v in Malta 1974 with the topic: the common heritage of mankind. Dalhousie University Archives MS-2-744 Box 178 Folder 28. Photo: unknown 103

4 Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s house by the sea. Monacensia Literaturarchiv und Bibliothek München, EMB F 22. Photo: Nica Borgese 202

5 ‘Which man do you trust with the future??’, Dalhousie University Archives Ms- 2-744 Box 235 Folder 4. Creator: unknown 211

6 Elisabeth Mann Borgese in Nova Scotia at Crystal Crescent Beach, December 25, 2000 Monacensia Literaturarchiv und Bibliothek Miinchen, EMB F 29. Photo: Nica Borgese 259

Introduction

When Elisabeth Mann Borgese (1918-2002) — professor of law and political science, activist and world citizen — stepped up to the speaker’s desk to give the Nexus Lecture in 1999, she said, ‘The idealists of today are the realists of tomorrow. The realists of today are dead tomorrow’! Those two sentences encapsulated her core values. Elisabeth Mann Borgese was an idealist at heart and she believed in the power of ideas. At the time she was over eighty years old with no plans to retire. She had worked with the oceans for almost half a century, had travelled the world attending countless meetings, had fought with politicians and argued with United Nations delegates, pushing on through disagreements and setbacks. For the numerous people who have followed her work and who are familiar with the Law of the Sea, she had become ‘the mother of the oceans’?

This book is both about her personal and professional life and about one of history's largest international efforts to govern the oceans: The United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (1958-94), often shortened to UNCLOS. While it may seem unusual to set one person’s life story alongside a history of intergovernmental United Nations processes, it is only through this double-lens that we can examine how ideas for political improvement change through time and travel through an institution, and how social, political, governmental and environmental events shape the ideas and ideals of individuals. This gives us a unique insight into the way individual people, ideas and institutions can come together to leave lasting legacies.

In this book, there are two separate legacies to account for. First, there is the legacy of the Law of the Sea Convention itself, in the form of the Law of the Sea Treaty — sometimes called the ‘Constitution of the Ocean’? This contains rules and regulations that the international community has agreed shall apply

1 Elisabeth Mann Borgese, ‘The Years of my Life. The Nexus Lecture’ (1999), in Elisabeth Mann Borgese und das Drama der Meere, exhibition catalogue, eds. Holger Pils and Karolina Kühn (Hamburg: mareverlag, 2012), 206-226.

2 Awni Benham, ‘Whither IOI? (2): Ten Years beyond the Loss of Elisabeth Mann Borgese’, in Ocean Yearbook 26 (1): 7. doi:10.1163/22116001-92600100.

3 Shirley Scott argues that viewing the Law of the Sea Convention treaty as constitutional would strengthen its legitimacy and international recognition, despite the inherent disagreements around certain portions of the treaty that have kept the US from ratifying it. Scott argues that ‘[...] a constitution cannot help but play a symbolic role, representing respect for the rules of law within that society’. Cf Shirley V. Scott, ‘The LOS Convention as a Constitutional Regime for the Oceans’, in Stability and Change in the Law of the Sea: The role of the LOS Convention, ed. Alex G. Oude Elferink (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2005), 38.

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Cc By 4.0 license.

to the ocean, including transport on its surface, fishing in its waters and how borders are drawn.* Second, there is Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s own legacy, and this is a bit more complicated, since the outcome of her work and the meaning of her life are less linear and quantifiable than a successful intergovernmental convention with a ratification date and a treaty at the finish line. From 1967 until the end of her life, Elisabeth Mann Borgese worked for a better ocean order — for fair and just rules and regulations governing the use of the oceans. As I researched this book, tracing her ideas and actions, I concluded that her legacy was two-fold. Firstly, she founded an institution that continues to carry forward her work: the International Ocean Institute that still operates in locations including Malta and Halifax, Nova Scotia. But her legacy also lies in how relevant her proposals and ideas still are today. Although the story of Elisabeth Mann Borgese and UNCLOs unfolded in the second half of the last century, questions of justice, injustice and international collaboration in the context of the ocean environment remain challenging to this day. Anyone interested in intergovernmental ocean issues — including scholars, activists, diplomats and state officials alike — would benefit from investigating Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s radical vision for a just world ocean order.®

4 There is some disagreement about the success of UNCLOs and the effectiveness of the rules that were adopted and that are still valid today. Scott is partly contradicted by the findings of scholars studying the way developing countries engaged with the Law of the Sea. Peter Bautista Payoyo, for instance, argues in his 1997 book, Cries of the Sea, that not all states were equally served by the outcome. Landlocked developing states in particular were ‘effectively marginalized from the global sharing arrangements [... |’. See Payoyo, Cries of the Sea, 151. See also Stephen Charles Vasciannie, Land-Locked and Geographically Disadvantaged States in the International Law of the Sea (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 221.

5 The Law of the Sea is as important today as it was in the 1970s. Its rules and regulations are constantly probed, tested and filled out with practical meaning. Therefore, a lot of the discussions that were ongoing during UNCLOs are still relevant. For instance, in order to keep up with accelerating developments in technology, along with political circumstances and legal context, Friedheim calls for a ‘sort of universal ocean institution that can help bring ocean law continuously up to date’. See Robert L. Friedheim, ‘A Proper Order for the Oceans: An Agenda for the New Century’, in Order for the Oceans at the Turn of the Century, eds. Davor Vidas and Willy Ostreng (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1999), 555. David Freestone’s article compilation, The 1982 Law of the Sea Convention at 30: Successes, Challenges and New Agendas, published in 2013, makes similar points about rethinking a functioning Law of the Sea. The work advocates considering the ramifications of the treaty in the light of today’s challenges from climate change, and addressing issues of environmental protection in areas outside national jurisdiction. See Alan Boyle, ‘Law of the Sea Perspective on Climate Change, in The 1982 Law of the Sea Convention at 30: Successes, Challenges and New Agendas, ed., David Freestone (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2013), 157-164. See also Christina M. Gjerde, ‘Challenges to Protecting the Marine Environment beyond National Jurisdiction’,

INTRODUCTION 3 1 World Traveller, Oyster Farmer and Dog Lover

When I started interviewing people about Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s life, work and personality, I began to hear a lot of stories. Once, after an interview at the International Ocean Institute (101) in Halifax, one of her former colleagues kept on telling anecdotes even after the audio recorder was turned off and buried in my pocket. Standing in the small hallway of the 101, he recalled how Elisabeth had once nearly capsized a dinghy off the coast of Jamaica, tilting the boat perilously as she made a sudden, enthusiastic move to get a closer look at some dolphins. The other passengers were horrified since they had passed a group of sharks just minutes earlier, but he told me she had giggled the whole incident off afterwards. Elisabeth Mann Borgese was never afraid to rock the boat.

There were so many other stories too — of the family of dogs that slept in her bed (all five or six of them) and of her house by the sea in Halifax, Nova Scotia — where neighbours who were invited round for dinner might find themselves rubbing shoulders with visiting diplomats. The Maltese ambassador, Arvid Pardo, could sometimes be spotted relaxing on her wooden deckchairs, while a former student and dog-sitter recalled seeing the honourable ambassador of Singapore, Tommy Koh, doing push-ups on the deck dressed in a white singlet. There was the time Elisabeth and her neighbour, Catherine — who had a diving certificate and an interest in ocean farming — started a business planting and harvesting oysters in their local waters. The oysters, a foreign species, flourished — perhaps too well since their descendants can still be found on the coast of Crystal Crescent beach a mile or so from the house. There are memories of the chic, all-black outfits she wore for her extensive travels, and photographs of her sat at her desk in a kaftan, looking out from her A-frame house across the lagoon to the ocean beyond. People told me of visitors who came and went, of travels to far-off places, of encounters with diplomats and state officials and of the spirit of adventure and hard work that went into everything she did (not just the oyster-farming business). But it was in the development of ocean governance that she cut an even more remarkable figure.

Elisabeth Mann Borgese wanted a new order for the oceans at a time when there were almost no rules governing them. A time when the extent of a nation state’s sovereignty over its coastal waters was still measured by the distance of a cannon shot® (about four nautical miles) and fishing and transport rights in The 1982 Law of the Sea Convention at 30: Successes, Challenges and New Agendas, ed., David Freestone (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2013), 165-173.

6 On the origin of the cannon shot rule see ‘The Three-Mile Limit as a Rule of International Law’, Columbia Law Review 23, no. 5 (1923): 473, doi:10.2307/1112336.

Mi es e d 4 2 Tad

FIGURE 1 Elisabeth Mann Borgese in New York in front of the United Nations Building MONACENSIA LITERATURARCHIV UND BIBLIOTHEK, EMB F 179 PHOTO: UNKNOWN were negotiated bilaterally.” In fact, Mann Borgese’s ambitions went beyond even this — she wanted a fairer system of governance not just for the oceans but for the entire world. The personal stories about her life are a testament to her enthusiasm for everything she engaged with — that same enthusiasm that almost capsized the dinghy in Jamaica and sometimes had a similar effect on discussions at the United Nations.

7 David Anderson writes about the status of ocean governance prior to UNCLOS: ‘During the early decades of the twentieth century, maritime law was stable and could be summarized as follows. Coastal states had territorial waters extending to three nautical miles (nm), subject to insignificant exceptions, and measured in a belt around the coast. Beyond that limit, the seas and oceans had the status of high seas. Maritime law was based upon relatively simple foundations: international custom derived from the practice of States, among which maritime powers loomed large; a few conventions on technical matters; the writing of professors; and a few arbitral decisions. No inter-governmental organizations with maritime mandates existed and there was no forum for discussing maritime questions. Maritime disputes were justiciable only with the consent of the States concerned’. See David Anderson, ed., Modern Law of the Sea. Selected Essays, Publications on Ocean Development Volume 59 (Leiden/ Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2008), 6.