How Safeguarding the Ocean Can Improve Global Security

In 2010, governments around the world agreed to protect 10 percent of the world’s oceans by 2020. Today, having just passed the halfway mark, prospects of achieving this ambitious goal seem bleak. Just over two percent of our oceans are recognized as “marine protected areas,” but a robust enforcement regime and resources are missing. Today marks Earth Day, and by creating largely unprotected “paper parks” we are failing to preserve our oceans, which has negative and long term consequences for U.S. national and global security.

The impetus for the protection of the world’s oceans and its resources is threefold – conservation, societal unrest and U.S. national and global security.