Biden's missed chance to safeguard America's oceans

Among President Biden’s many laudable environmental accomplishments, one of his historic failures is that he declined to protect America’s ocean ecosystems. Despite the president’s professed goal to protect 30 percent of America’s oceans by 2030, he did virtually none of this. Perhaps he was planning on a second term (obviously a bad gamble), or perhaps he never really intended to do any of this.

Regardless, the hope and optimism for ocean protection at the beginning of the Biden administration has, in the end, turned to profound disappointment. On this issue, the administration prioritized local politics over science, need and national interest.

At the start of his term, a group of marine scientists from across the nation submitted a joint scientists’ letter on ocean protection to President Biden, urging him to strongly protect 30 percent of America’s ocean ecosystems by 2030. The scientists’ ocean letter — signed by more than 90 university deans, department chairs, distinguished marine professors, agency and independent scientists (including legendary Dr. Jane Goodall) — told the president that America’s ocean ecosystems are in significant decline due to decades of over exploitation, climate change, acidification and pollution.

Scientists warned the president that ocean ecosystems will have difficulty retaining functional integrity throughout the climate crisis this century, and that these ecosystems need the strongest protections the government can provide.

As virtually all of America’s strongly protected federal waters to date are in the remote central Pacific, and none are on productive, intensively exploited continental shelves, the scientists urged President Biden to use executive authority under the Antiquities Act to establish Marine National Monuments in the Arctic Ocean, Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, Gulf of Alaska, Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Maine, Caribbean, and Pacific and Atlantic coasts. This isn’t rocket science, but simply adaptive, precautionary ecosystem management.

President Biden ignored the scientists’ plea.

Although he has so far designated seven cultural/historic monuments on land, Biden has still established no Marine National Monuments. While it is possible he may enact marine monuments in the final weeks of his term, indications are that this is unlikely.

Further, the Biden administration has designated only three small National Marine Sanctuaries, two in the Great Lakes, one small one off California. In early January, the administration is expected to announce, with great fanfare no doubt, its designation of a Marine Sanctuary overlaying the already strongly protected Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (northwestern Hawaiian Islands), Coral Reef Reserve and National Wildlife Refuge.

To be clear, this sanctuary designation will not protect any new ocean area, but will simply further insulate existing protections from future administrative and legal challenges (e.g. at the Supreme Court). While this additional layer of protection is appropriate, it does not substitute for the critical need to strongly protect other more threatened marine ecosystems. And on this, the Biden administration simply failed.

The U.S. has 17 national marine sanctuaries, five of those in just one state (California); and five marine national monuments, four in the remote central Pacific, and one small one in the northwest Atlantic. But other productive, and troubled marine ecosystems on continental shelves continue to be ignored, largely due to politics.

Alaska for instance — with more shoreline, continental shelf, marine mammals, seabirds, and fish than the rest of the U.S. combined, and one of the most overexploited and climate stressed marine ecosystems in the world ocean — still has no national marine sanctuary or marine national monument, due to federal timidity in the face of industry and political opposition. The federal government has essentially ceded ownership of Alaska’s vast federal offshore waters — over twice the size of the land area of the state — to parochial politics in Alaska.

Astonishingly, the U.S. is the only Arctic coastal nation that still has no permanently protected Arctic Ocean waters. Russia, Canada, Norway and Greenland all have established permanent Arctic marine protected areas. But while presenting itself as an international leader in Arctic and ocean conservation, the U.S. has only established temporary administrative restrictions in its Arctic waters (oil and gas withdrawals and commercial fishery closures) that will almost certainly be rescinded in the Trump II administration, as they were in Trump I.

To remedy this, a group of Arctic Indigenous Peoples, conservationists and marine scientists in Alaska proposed to President Biden that he designate an Arctic Ocean Marine National Monument, to protect the U.S. Arctic Ocean now in severe decline due to global warming and sea ice loss.

As proposed, the Arctic Ocean Monument would encompass all U.S. federal waters (3-200 miles offshore) from the Northern Bering Sea north along the U.S./Russia maritime boundary, and east to the U.S./Canada maritime boundary (approximately 219,000 square miles), and would also include the Extended Continental Shelf seabed claims recently made by the U.S. in international Arctic waters north of the 200-mile limit (approximately 200,000 square miles).

The monument would permanently prohibit offshore oil and gas development, commercial fishing, and seabed mining, and would establish a co-management relationship between the federal government and Arctic coastal tribes to manage this vast offshore ecosystem. As the region is the now-submerged ancient homeland for all Indigenous Peoples in the western hemisphere — Beringia — it is an inarguable candidate for monument designation under the Antiquities Act.

Even though President Biden stated that: “What I really want to do ...is conserve significant amounts of Alaskan sea and land forever,” he ignored the Arctic Ocean monument proposal.

This decade is likely our last best chance to secure strong protections for America’s offshore ecosystems, but now as the Biden administration has failed to do so, and Trump II will do none of this, we may have lost that last best chance.

Whenever faced with industry push-back or political pressure to ocean conservation measures, every federal administration, Democratic or Republican, simply refuses to act. This is a recipe for a disastrous future for our oceans. History will not be kind to those government officials with the responsibility to address our ocean crisis, but stood by and did nothing.

President Biden could have helped save our oceans with the simple stroke of his pen, but he refused.

The blame for further industrial damage and decline in America’s ocean ecosystems in the Trump II presidency will be shared by President Biden, as he had the authority, science, public support and national interest obligation to prevent such, yet did nothing — an unconscionable betrayal of the public trust.

Rick Steiner is a marine conservation biologist in Anchorage, retired marine professor with the University of Alaska, chair of the Board of Directors of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and founder of Oasis Earth.

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