 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening from the Stockton Center for International Law at the U.S. Naval War College. We welcome you to day three, the final day of the Alexander C. Cushing International Law Conference. I'm Commander Michael Petta. I'm the Associate Director for Maritime Operations here at the Stockton Center and I will be your emcee for today. On day one of the conference we heard from eight U.S. military officers and learned about their unique perspectives matters related to the Indo-Pacific region. On day two of the conference we heard about naval forces developments in that same area from the Senkeikus to Diego Garcia. Today we will look a little more broadly at issues not unique to the Indo-Pacific region. We have four panels today, four sessions, I apologize, sessions nine through 12 and session nine we will discuss climate change. Session 10, we will address the Arctic. Session 11, we will discuss illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing often referred to as IUU fishing. And then to close out today in session 12, we will hear from the U.S. Coast Guard's Judge Advocate General, Melissa Burt. Before setting off in that direction, I'd like to offer a few reminders to the audience. First, the chat feature is disabled in Zoom today. We encourage you to submit questions and upvote questions using the Q&A feature. Also, Zoom has a closed caption option, so if you would like a live transcript of today's speakers, you can activate that live transcript at the bottom right portion of the Zoom application. To reserve time for discussion today, we will keep our expert introductions relatively brief. And if you would like to learn more about our speakers' distinguished careers and expertise, you can find that in their biographical information in the online conference program. We will post a link to the conference program in the chat feature for your convenience. Session nine is entitled Climate Change and National Security. This discussion will be moderated by Professor Mark Nevitt, Syracuse University College of Law. Before we turn to Mark, the Honorable Sherry Goodman, presently at the Wilson Center, and formerly the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, will set the stage. Deputy Undersecretary Goodman, I turn the floor over to you, ma'am. Thank you. And it's a pleasure to be with you, Commander Pena, and all of the audience. Oh, let's see my video. Okay. Can you see me now? There we go. Good morning, everyone. It's our evening, wherever you're joining us from. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I'd like to thank the Stockton Center at the U.S. Naval War College for inviting me to join you. And to Mark Nevitt for taking the initiative for organizing this event. And you've all certainly chosen a timely moment to convene a conference on the Indo-Pacific and national security. The Indo-Pacific is witnessing major geo-strategic shifts. China is flexing both its economic and military muscles to expand its influence globally. India is struggling with the worst COVID outbreak of any nation in the region while contending with security issues internally and along its border with China. Across the region, countries are navigating the twin challenges of building a post-pandemic new normal while addressing looming environmental and resource competition that will be a defining feature of interstate relations for coming decades. Climate change is exacerbating these issues. Severe weather impacts the systems of transport and power infrastructure essential for modern life. It threatens livelihoods in traditional industries like agriculture or fishing that are foundational to Indo-Pacific economies and it heightens the risk of pandemics and novel pathogens. And it can make scarce resources scarcer, ethnic tensions more severe, competition for resources in the global economy more pronounced, and societies less governable. I'll highlight some examples shortly. Let's start with climate change also posits specific threats to militaries. This is not news to the U.S. Navy. But it's worth identifying three strands of climate security threats facing the United States military and its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific. First, climate change harms operational readiness by damaging military ports, airports, infrastructure and equipment or by impairing the physical ability of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to perform their duties. Second, it induces a surge in demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster response HADR missions. Finally, climate change is a threat multiplier, a term I coined back in 2007 when I founded the CNA military advisory board and we found that it amplifies underlying tensions and acts as a catalyst for conflict. For these reasons, I am an advocate of climatizing security, taking action to anticipate or prevent or prepare for climate-related threats to security while also leading the charge on the energy transition. To illustrate this approach to the issue, I'd like to take you on a quick climate security tour of the region. We'll zoom in on competition over shared water basins and resources in the global commons in Southeast Asia, internal migration and a standoff between nuclear powers in South Asia and nature-based perils and adversarial aggression in the Arctic. These examples should be sufficient to inform a discussion on options for better managing the climate security landscape of the future. First, let's start in Southeast Asia. Many of the region's endemic security threats are being exacerbated by climate change. Geopolitical tensions with China are on the rise in the region. Chief among them are contested maritime boundaries and competition for ocean-based resources like fish and hydrocarbons. On land, excessive heat and drought, particularly in rural agricultural areas, induces migration to coastal cities which are themselves at risk from storms and inundation. Domestic insurgent groups and violent extremist organizations are recruiting farmers and fishermen no longer able to make a living. Fishermen in depth at making bombs for blast fishing, the practice of stunning fish with an underwater explosion then capturing them with a net, are particularly attractive recruits. These threat amplifiers added to the physical damage wrought by climate impacts are stunting, economic growth, and impairing the ability of governments to provide basic services, compromising stability and security. Let's focus first on the South China Sea. Something I know you're all familiar with and interested in. Territorial claims in the South China Sea look a bit like a football coach's game plan. There are red and blue lines crisscrossing all over the map. The most troubling is China's Nine Dash Line, a U-shaped line drawn by 1940s Chinese cartographer encompassing up to 90% of the sea. Much of the claim is contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Nonetheless, China has been actively solidifying its control of sea lines of communication by building airstrips, ports, and sensor arrays on contested islands and marine features. These assets then serve as a base of operations for the Chinese military and Coast Guard. Interestingly, Chinese action is driven in part by climate change. The resources they claim include subsea minerals necessary for the renewable energy transition. They also include rich deposits of oil and gas and estimated two years of oil and 17 years of gas at Chinese consumption rates, which would arguably stay in the ground to avoid more dangerous climate change. China has forcibly blocked Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam from oil and gas exploration while initiating its own, causing consternation among the ASEAN nations that ASEAN nations are struggling to address. Southeast Asia is home to about 9% of the global population, but 18% of the global fish catch. Overfishing and warmer, more acidic oceans are taking a toll on both historically rich fishing grounds and traditional livelihoods supporting millions. Small local fishing boats forced to sail farther from land are confronted with armed Chinese vessels. In September 2020, the Chinese Coast Guard reported that over the course of the preceding four months, it had evicted over 1,100 fishing boats from the northern half of the South China Sea while detaining 11 vessels and over 64 crew members. The confluence of dwindling stocks and being treated like pawns in a geo-strategic game puts undue pressure on Southeast Asia and fishermen and calls into question ASEAN's ability to manage conflict in a unified productive manner. China's maritime activity is underpinned by a new Chinese Coast Guard law which went into effect in February. It authorizes its maritime fleets to use lethal force on foreign ships operating in Chinese waters. Several Southeast Asian and East Asian countries have expressed concern about this law, including Taiwan and Japan. As with other disputes in the South China Sea, no legal or institutional recourse exists to resolve such completing claims. Shared river basins. Contest over water are not limited to the open seas. A case in point and frequently in the news is the Mekong River. The Mekong originates in China then flows through Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam supporting a population of 60 million. And if you've ever been down there as I have, you really feel like you're about to be flooded every moment you're on that river. Rivery geography often favors up-street actors and China has taken advantage of its position to build a series of dams in part to meet its climate targets. Thus when water levels in the Mekong plunge 90% in late 2019 and early 2020 prompting emergency action in Vietnam and Thailand, ice turned to China. China demerred, citing natural causes, but a U.S. State Department funded project by the nonprofit Eyes on Earth revealed that the missing water corresponded to the reserve capacity of 11 major dams built upstream by a Chinese state-owned enterprise cited for poor environmental and social performance. This and preceding examples illustrate what is often missing in resource conflicts, a trusted source of data and an institutional capacity to manage dispute resolution. The cross-border nature of climate change and the crescendo of competition for scarce resources demonstrate the need for both better data and more robust institutions for diplomacy. Next, let's move to South Asia. This region's geography makes it particularly vulnerable to climate change. What is less appreciated is the impact of climactic change on security and stability both within and between states. The impact of climate change on the internal stability in South Asia is hard to overstate. The subregions population of almost 2 billion was already confronting endemic poverty, poor governance, water stress and energy inequality before COVID-19 hit. Lower on the development ladder than Southeast Asia, South Asian nations still struggle to provide basic services, including energy, water, sanitation, healthcare and adequate food security. Temperatures are soaring, exacerbating some of the most dangerous air pollution in the world. Rural agricultural families are being exposed to heat that is simply not supportable by the human body absent air conditioning. And with air conditioning penetration at only about 10%, there is nowhere for most people to escape. Farmers are abandoning their drought plagued lands for proverbial and literal greener pastures, but that's no easy feat. Migrants crossing the boundaries of India's federal states also cross ethnic lines, run the risk of being perceived as competition for jobs and living space. With climate force migration reaching almost 25 million in 2019 and projected to surge to 63 million by 2050 in one recent study, the precursors for conflict and fragility are already so. Climate factors are also consequential in the tense relations between nuclear armed India, Pakistan and China. A study published last week jointly by the Council on Strategic Risk and the Woodwell Climate Research Center projects a strong warming trend near the disputed India-China border where approximately 100,000 Indian and Chinese troops are deployed at altitudes reaching 15,000 feet. Military patrols which are not viable today may become more frequent setting the conditions for more violent clashes while concurrently increasing the likelihood of deadly avalanches. Meanwhile China partly due to its transition to renewable energy is planning the world's largest hydroelectric facility just north of where the Prama Putra enters India. Three times the size of the Three Gorges Dam, this dam project is also located in a seismically sensitive zone. This has caused major concern in downstream India which is also worried that the new Chinese dam could withhold or flood its adjacent regions with water. In truth it will be difficult to tell if a future flood is the result of Chinese manipulation or simply climate factors. Though a major earthquake could be induced by a massive Chinese dam causing it to fracture and cause a major flood, Chinese lack of transparency on the dam projects affecting its neighbors only increases India's mistrust. China is also constructing a series of dams in Pakistani-held Kashmir which India objects to due to its territorial claims there. The recent climate security study shows that these dams when built will be viable until the end of the century due to glacial melt patterns maintaining a good flow in the Indus River. This will contribute to further strengthening the China-Pakistan partnership, a sore point with India, in all these disputes universally trusted data sources and institutions capable of managing disputes are lacking. Well, now let's move north. What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic and it's very timely. Today is the Arctic Council. Tomorrow is the Arctic Council meeting. Our Secretary of State Blinken will be in Iceland for that and meeting his Russian counterpart for the first time and addressing Arctic and climate issues there. Warming there has cascading effects throughout the region. At the same time, Indo-Pacific countries are increasingly active in the far north in shipping, oil and gas exploration and militarization of newly accessible sea channels. NOAA's 2020 Arctic report card showed that the Arctic has already warmed almost two degrees centigrade. High temperatures induce massive wildfires in Alaska, Russia and elsewhere in 2019, adding substantially to global emissions and accelerating permafrost thaw. Parmafrost thaw unleashes multiple irreversible threats to stability in a delicate but rapidly changing region. First among these is destabilization of existing infrastructure, including aging U.S. military installations, radar stations and National Guard posts in Alaska and Greenland. I recommend checking out a visual story map in a company report published just today or maybe yesterday by the Council on Strategic Risk and the Woodwell Climate Research Center for a glimpse of what's ahead. Dangerous subsidence already threatens residential, industrial and oil and gas infrastructure across the region with an estimated cumulative price tag of $66 trillion globally. This figure does not include the release of novel pathogens, release from the frozen remains of humans and animals. Indeed, the recent release of amoeba-infecting viruses in Siberia are believed to be the result of thawing permafrost. Transmission of novel or eradicated pathogens portends serious worldwide health security consequences. Viewed in the context of increased mobility and commercial activity in the region as well as the destabilization risks to local sanitation infrastructure, these high impact but low probability health risk become more likely and more serious. Human activity is also heating up. Mineral gas and oil exploration, shipping routes, research activities, fishing and tourism have all migrated north in recent years. Russia in particular is promoting the northern sea route as a toll road for transit, a shipping lane offering state-sponsored icebreakers and incentives for cargo. Russia is also aggressively pursuing hydrocarbon development across the Beaufort, Norwegian and Chuck G.C., thought to contain 30% of the world's undiscovered recoverable gas reserves and 13% of its undiscovered oil reserves. Asian companies and Chinese state companies are also developing oil and gas extraction infrastructure in this region and building out military operations in support. Indeed, China has declared its first Arctic policy several years ago is connecting a polar silk road around the region and has significant ambitions as well. Besides scope and uncertain safety procedures being used for resource extraction pose concerning security risks, particularly the likelihood of onshore or offshore spills or collisions among vessels in the region. And I direct you to a tabletop exercise report we did with the National Academy of Sciences, the Wilson Center and Sandia National Labs several years ago looking at a nuclear incident in the Bering Strait. Between a hypothetical Russian nuclear icebreaker at a Chinese LNG vessel in 2050. Okay, this brings us to the need to address climate gaps in international legal regimes, all you lawyers out there and I'll confess myself I'm a recovery lawyer. Okay, the South China Sea conflicts in particular highlight the critical role that islands and maritime features play in the definition of sovereignty and ocean resource rights. As such islands and features are submerged by rising seas nations like Indonesia and the Pacific Island states stand to lose significant portions of their exclusive economic zones and associated use of marine resources including energy and mineral deposits. This development opens the door for developed nations to offer island building expertise in exchange for access to the easy of less developed geographically dispersed island nations. Such agreements could vastly expand the influence of developed nations and alter the strategic landscape substantially. A second issue arises when developed nations exercise their island building capabilities inside the easy of other nations. The law to see exclude features that cannot sustain life from the calculation of territorial rights. China's deliberate development and extension of islands within the Spratlys potentially changes their status under the framework of the law at a moment when contested territories are likely to become even more strategically significant for access to fish, energy resources and sea lines of communication. Turning down the heat will require a systematic integration of climate factors into security analysis planning and operations as well as across broader government functions. Both climate change and geopolitical dynamics are developing with incredible speed. The US and partner militaries need to act just as quickly. The first step must be database analysis of how future climate projections will affect existing and probable security risks throughout the region, including secondary and tertiary effects. Such analysis should be repeated with each relative relevant scientific advance to main full situational awareness and according planning. Second climate security consideration should be shared across government departments to inform diplomatic energy commercial and trade policy decisions. Military and security actors can be effective advocates in support of the transition to low carbon energy, something which is lacking in the region today. Third regional governments should invest in trusted granular real-time data where climate sensitive geographies and fragile security situations overlap. This data can form the basis for a new era of data diplomacy, especially where transparency can curb the actions of regional aggressors. Fourth, governments should consider how to leverage existing diplomatic forms like ASEAN and the South Asian Association for regional cooperation to elevate and mainstream climate security issues. These institutions will need to evolve in both scope and institutional robustness to take on the mounting challenges. And fifth, the US and its regional partner militaries should step up their game in climate security preparedness. This, that means you guys, this means moving beyond reactive HADR operations to incorporate anticipatory intelligence gathering, analysis planning and operations to combat the threat multiplier effect of a warming planet. The existing Pacific Environmental Security Forum organized by US PAYCOM as well as other Pacific Naval gatherings could be helpful means to advance such initiatives. And finally, at the global level, foundational laws like UNCLOS should be updated to account for technical and climate related realities of today. It goes without saying that of course the US should ratify this law, we've been saying that for decades, hopefully it will happen within our lifetimes. That brings us back to where we started in closing. The Indo-Pacific will continue to face complex geostrategic shifts. Those related to climate change can be better predicted, anticipated and addressed. Taking rapid action to do so systematically and in coordination with allied and partner nations is the best strategy for ensuring a stable transition to a lower carbon, lower conflict world. We can better secure the Indo-Pacific region, work with our allies and partners by taking steps now to climate-proof our security for the future. Thank you very much. Great. Wonderful. Thank you, Ms. Goodman, for those keynote remarks. And let me just note that Deputy Secretary Goodman, you've been thinking about climate security for a long time and you are a true trailblazer in this area. So thank you so much for your keynote remarks, which sets up our panel here today very well. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Mark Net. I'm a former naval officer, JAG. I am a somewhat of a recovering attorney, although I'm still a law professor at the Syracuse University College of Law, where I'm writing and researching in the areas of climate change, environmental law and national security law. And I'm moderating today's panel on climate change and national security, where I'm joined by three of the world's leading experts and Ms. Goodman, your voice is welcome as well. And I want to specifically thank Professor James Kraska at the Naval War College for the invitation and Commander Mike Petta, who does all the administrative work behind the scenes to make this happen. Really, really thank you for your graciousness and your generosity. I think it's appropriate that we're having this panel discussion on climate change and national security. One of the first scholarly papers on this topic entitled Global Climate Change, Implications for the United States Navy, was drafted right here at the Naval War College back in 1990. And it said, and I quote, Naval operations will be drastically affected by global climate change. And we need resources of both mind and money to tackle the growing problem of climate change. So we may not have the money, but we certainly have the best minds here in the war college. And I would submit since 1990, this topic has only grown in importance. Our three panelists, their bios are in the program. Let me just highlight a couple aspects of these wonderful esteemed scholars. First, Professor Daniel Badansky is the region's professor of law at Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law Arizona State University. He's been thinking deeply about international law governance and climate governance for 30 plus years, and just wrote the I believe that the best international legal governance on this topic entitled international climate change law with Oxford Press. Second, Alice Hill is the David Rubenstein Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council of Foreign Relations. She has deep, deep experience on this topic serving as a special assistant to President Barack Obama and senior director for resilience policy and national security staff. We had a chance to work briefly together, though she was way way way above the chain of commands. When I was in Hampton Roads, Virginia when I was in the Navy, working on a sea level rise pilot project during that time about seven years ago. She's also the author of this book, Building a Resilient Tomorrow, which is mandatory reading for everyone here on this panel. And last but not least is Professor Karen Scott who's joining us from from New Zealand, which I believe might be three o'clock in the morning, which shows the dedication to this topic. So special thanks to you Professor Scott. Professor Scott is a professor of law at the University of Canterbury and she too has wrote written extensively about international law environmental law climate change law, and I'm looking to bring her voice on in the Pacific in particular to this conversation. We have each panelists, starting with Professor Bodansky to give their opening remarks, based upon their respective areas of expertise. And so I like to turn the floor over to Professor Bodansky for his remarks and then we'll go to Miss Hill and the Professor Scott before going to Q&A. And for those participants out there in the cyber world. Don't be shy on the Q&A. We only have an hour to tackle this crisis. We'll get there. But please do get your comments and questions in the Q&A function and we'll trick you our best to get to those. So without further ado, Professor Bodansky. Great. Thank you very much, Mark, for that kind introduction and thanks to the Stockton Center for inviting me to participate. It's a pleasure to be here today. In these very brief opening remarks, I'm going to describe the climate change regime, give an overview of it, and then discuss some climate security interactions and the role of the regime in addressing those. There are many climate security interactions and Ms. Goodman did a great job going over them. On the one hand, climate change will have big impacts on the military. It's a threat multiplier. As she said, it's affect military missions. It will affect military operations. And then on the other hand, the causal error also runs in the other direction. The military itself contributes to climate change through its emissions. The climate change regime has been an international forum to address climate change since its establishment almost three decades ago. This slide shows some of the key events, including the adoption of the UN Framework Convention in 1992, which established the basic system of governance. The adoption of the Kyoto Protocol five years later, which imposed legally binding limits on emissions of developed countries. The Copenhagen Accord in 2009, which established a more global approach, and I think really laid the foundation for the Paris Agreement. The adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and then three years later, the Paris Rulebook, which sets forth the detailed rules for how the Paris Agreement are going to work. The Paris Agreement is the focal point of climate action today. And I think it's important here to distinguish between two parishes. There's the Paris Agreement strictly speaking. And second, there's the wider Paris process, which includes discussions of climate change and other multilateral forum, and by non governmental groups, and by not other non state actors. The Paris Agreement is crucial, but I think it's comparatively modest. It was adopted in 2015 and came into force the following year. Now that the US is rejoined under President Biden has almost universal participation. What I like to call the Paris paradigm has five elements. First, a bottom up approach in which states pledge what they're going to do to address climate change in nationally determined contributions or NDCs. The hybrid legal structure in which the agreement as a whole is legally binding, but not all of its provisions are. Most importantly, there's no legal obligation on parties to achieve their NDCs. Third, a reliance on transparency rather than legal bindingness to promote compliance and accountability. And then with an ambition cycle to ratchet up the level of ambition over time. The initial round of pledges are clearly insufficient to address the problem. But every five years the parties are going to be doing a global stock take of their collective progress in addressing climate change and these then provide the basis for their next round of NDCs where they pledge what they're going to do in the succeeding years. And then finally a nuanced approach to differentiation in which parties have essentially the same obligations in contrast to the Kyoto protocol, which imposed emission reduction limits on developed countries, but had no new commitments for developing countries such as China which is now of course the world's largest emitter. Supplementing the Paris agreement is the larger process that the agreement has spawned. And this involves a wide variety of initiatives including governments, the financial sector industry and environmental groups. For example, the powering past coal coalition is a coalition of national and sub national governments and businesses, aiming to phase out existing coal power. The net zero asset managers initiative involves companies that manage $37 trillion in assets. The mission possible partnership brings together more than 400 companies to develop net zero. All these wider initiatives are aimed at achieving the three objectives of the Paris agreement to limit temperature increase to well below two degrees centigrade and to pursue efforts to limit temperature increase to five degrees to enhance resilience and adaptation, and to align global financial flows with the other two objectives of the agreement. Having described the UN climate change regime I'd like to make for quite general points about the climate security nexus. First, the UN climate change regime itself doesn't say much specifically about security issues. The important contribution I think it can make to security is to be successful in preventing damage dangerous climate change. And here the main challenge is to increase the ambition of countries efforts to reduce emissions to put them on a pathway to net zero emissions, at least by mid century. And that's the main goal of the Glasgow climate conference which is upcoming in November. And second, highlighting the national security implications of climate change can be a significant spur to greater climate ambition. But I think at least for the foreseeable future, the UN climate change regime itself will remain the locus of international action. It might be their role of the Security Council in this connection and addressing climate change. In theory, the UN Security Council could determine the climate change of the threat to international peace and security and then that would be the potentially the basis for mandatory measures to address climate change enter chapter seven of the UN Charter. And that would be the polar opposite of the nationally determined bottom up approach that I described that's reflected in the UN climate change regime. And I think it's highly unlikely that this kind of approach would be acceptable internationally, at least for countries like the US, which is now pushing climate change in the UN Security Council as an issue. The point of doing so is not as a prelude to Security Council action under chapter seven of the Charter. And I would highlight the urgency of the problem in order to spur greater ambition. Third, the military needs to take climate change into account in its planning, to the extent it's not doing so already and I think this was covered extremely well in Miss Goodman's keynote address. It needs to take climate change in anticipating future conflicts. It needs to anticipate the greater demands that are going to be put on it by climate in these disasters, for example, flooding of coastal areas, a destruction caused by extreme weather events, dams, deeter drought, and it needs to take climate change into effect the effects of climate change into account on its basis and readiness. Similarly, the Security Council, the military itself needs to reduce its own contribution to climate change. Emissions by the US military alone are greater than those in many countries. So the military needs to do what it can to reduce its climate footprint. So that concludes my opening remarks and look forward to discussion. Thanks. Great. Thank you, Professor Bedansky, Judge Hill. Hello. Here we go. I'm allowed to start my video now. Thanks. Well, what a pleasure to join this stellar panel to hear from Sherry, who has been at the forefront of this work, Mark. It's nice to be reconnected in our different roles. And I look forward to the other panelists. I haven't met them, but Professor Bedansky, I've already learned a great deal. So in 2008, in November, 2008, my telephone rang. And on the other end was Janet Napolitano. And here I'll just add a quick aside, my career advice for everyone is be nice to those who sit next to in school. I had sat next to Janet Napolitano in law school. She had just been asked to serve as the Secretary of Homeland Security. I was then a judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court. And I decided to accept the offer and I moved to Washington. One of my very first assignments was to work on climate change. And the reason the assignment fell to me is not because I knew a great deal about climate change. In fact, I'd heard the warnings from the 1990s and onward. And I had assumed, frankly, that two degrees didn't mean much. I lived in Los Angeles. The temperature toggled between two degrees Fahrenheit. I didn't realize it was two degrees Celsius. And I just did not appreciate that this would have significant consequences for the United States and the world. Because I was the new person at the department and because and this is the topic I want to focus the reality of working on climate change. At that time, climate change was not viewed as a career enhancing move. It carried the political connotations it still carries today in a deeply divided and polarized nation with some skepticism as to whether the change is even occurring or what the causes could be. So because I was the new person as I recall, we're sitting around the conference table with the senior leadership at the Department of Homeland Security and somebody says the body language is very bad about working on an executive order from President Obama to address climate adaptation and mitigation. So somebody said, Oh, give it to her she's new. And that's in fact what happened. So I assembled the task force with members of the military we learned from us naval task force climate change. We had the Coast Guard which is a part of DHS. We brought together all the agencies that had been put into the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of 911 and of course DHS has a deep anti terrorism focus. But it's also responsible for federal emergency management, the Coast Guard, as well as immigration. In 2009, the task force in response to the order by President Obama to plan for the climate change impacts. We asked ourselves a question that in hindsight I think was perhaps somewhat in subordinate to the President's direction. But we asked, Should we even care about climate change in 2009, given the all the other responsibilities, the security responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security. I think by the end of that task force, virtually every member had realized that the department needed to care deeply about climate change, because it would affect virtually every human made system and every natural system because of the warming temperatures. But the reality of working on climate change as we go forward and President Biden certainly has signaled that this is going to be an issue of great focus during his administration on his very first day of office. He indicated that it would be a priority item and both our national security as well as our foreign policy. And through that, he's taken some dramatic steps he appointed Special Envoy John Kerry, who has known for his deep interest and knowledge in national security and climate change as Special Envoy for climate is given Special Envoy Kerry a seat at the national security table, so that he has a voice in the making of national security policy. He has directed the Department of Defense, as well as the other security agencies to develop plans to consider climate risks going forward. This is all very important work to make sure that we are adequately assessing the impacts that have already occurred, and will that will continue to occur. But we have to recognize that we have a gap in climate literacy. We do not believe that our military or civilian leaders in our security organizations have any systematic training in the environmental risks posed by climate change and the risk to security. So we need to close that gap. We need to make sure that people are adequately educated and have adequate time to understand the nuanced and complex ways in which changing temperatures rising temperatures can affect everything from military operations, planes, destroying Air Force bases, sea level rise in Norfolk that will make it difficult for employees to get to work to carry out their military responsibilities training. That has to be cut short because it's either too hot or there's too much wildfire risk. We need to understand these systematically and that means they have to be incorporated and integrated into decision making across the board. And that means that we need an educated set of personnel who can do that. And that is a gap that will need to be closed. That is a gap that also exists across the federal government at this point. And we need a plan for how we will make sure that everyone understands what the facts are regarding climate change. We also need to make sure that we have military personnel understanding what the risks are to human security. Sherry has described how this can deeply affect resource competition can affect access to basic needs, food, water, shelter, livelihoods. As those are threatened, we will see more people migrating. In fact, if you look at our current southern border with the surge of Central Americans from the Northern Triangle. That's from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Many of those migrants will tell you they are leaving because of the recent back to back hurricanes and those hurricanes are likely influenced and made worse by climate change. And then the descent into poverty, chaos and crime, which often accompanies a natural disaster where governments are threatened. We see bad actors, criminal networks, terrorists use those moments as recruiting opportunities. And we need to understand that so that we can make our own choices about policies to combat those threats going forward, but it has to be a part of the discussion in the room. And today, to date, that has rarely occurred in my experience. In fact, Bob Woodward in his book gave a wonderful anecdote about Richard Holbrook, who was then the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. And it was a discussion about security risks in that area. And during the meeting in the situation. Richard Holbrook said, well, there is a component of climate risk here because of the melting glaciers and the Himalayas that cause a water to accumulate and then can cause massive downstream flooding, which can then undermine in turn the government. As he was leaving the room, several others that were in the room were overheard to say, are you kidding? What was he talking about? And it was my experience when I was at the White House that climate change was rarely raised as a topic. And when there were discussions of security risks, be it in Pakistan, be it in Syria with 5 million migrants, as we're occurring after a 1200 year drought and mismanagement of water resources. That simply wasn't part of the calculus. That needs to change. When I was at the White House in response to the lack of focus on this, I led the development of an executive order on national security and climate change, which President Obama signed, President Trump rescinded and now I'm happy to say President Biden has brought back. That order is a great start. It means, however, that we need to make sure that we have the proper information data, as Siri has said, available. And I'll leave you with this last thought. As we think about national security and climate change, we need to think about much more than just national security military might. And as one story was related to me by an expert on national security and climate change, she was speaking to a mid level career officer and the officer very politely said, Yes, ma'am, I understand what you're saying. But what hill do I take. What this will mean for the United States going forward. It's not an issue of necessarily military might. It's figuring out how we will react as human security is increasingly threatened by these events. And then that in turn threatens our national security. So what will mean as Secretary Mattis recognized when he was under President Trump, that we need to invest in other places to make sure that they can thrive because as Secretary Mattis said if we don't that just means there's more and more bullets. So we need to change our thinking in terms of recognizing that this is a new way of addressing security, when people's lives are threatened, it can have ramifications for us and our security in the United States. So really looking forward to the discussion. Thank you so much. It's been really an honor to be asked to join you here today. Thank you, Judge Hill, Professor Scott. Good morning. Thank you, Professor nevitt for your kind words of introduction. And I'd also like to thank the US Naval War College for their kind invitation to speak this morning. I'd like to address my remarks this morning to a very particular issue within the broader context of climate change and security. And that issue is sea level rise and its implications for maritime zones and maritime entitlements. The issue which was introduced briefly by Deputy Goodman in her introductory keynote this morning. Sea level rise is predicted to or sea level is predicted to rise by more than a meter by 2100. And although this is likely to have implications for around 70 coastal states, it's island states in the Pacific, and to a lesser extent Southeast Asia that are likely to be most at risk. The rising sea levels will typically force the normal baseline that is the low water line along the coast inland and base points may be lost leading to a reduction of maritime zones and a change or loss of entitlements within those zones. This has clear implications for security in terms of resources, the environment, and in the extreme could risk the very existence of individual island states. And the sea in responding to this risk is that a conventional interpretation of baselines under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the sea, is that with two exceptions in relation to unstable deltas and the outer continental shelf baselines are ambulatory, meaning that they move as the coast moves. This reflects the principle of maritime delimitation that the land dominates the sea. The sea level rise therefore has implications for regime security as well as national security to the extent that the traditional rules are not responding to the needs and demands of states. There is a risk that the law in the sea could be undermined as a regime. There is one partial legal solution to this problem fairly straightforward partial because it addresses the stability of maritime zones but not the situation where the land disappears altogether. The United States should be able to fix their maritime zones provided that they've been determined in accordance with international law. Consequently these maritime zones change as the coastline changes. Now this solution was recommended by the International Law Association in 2018 in their report on international law and sea level rise and it's received support from quite a number of states, particularly in the context of the Pacific Island states. Fixing baselines and or outer limits can be justified on the basis of equity stability and transparency. It is consistent with a dynamic and evolutionary interpretation of the law of the sea, and would also support states obligations in relation to adaptation under the climate change regime which has been beautifully outlined this morning by Professor The Pacific and to a lesser extent Southeast Asia is notable in that states within this region are increasingly fixing their maritime boundaries in legislation or by the use of physical means. In the Pacific in particular, there's also been significant institutional support for this practice. With declarations being issued by a number of regional institutions, including the Pacific Islands forum, the Polynesian leaders group and states party to the narrow agreement. Declarations were issued in 2010 2015 2018 and 2019 all essentially asserting the Pacific nations can and should fix their maritime boundaries that remain in perpetuity irrespective of the impacts of sea level rise. In its first issues paper released by the International Law Commission group, looking at sea level rise in relation to international law in February 2020. The authors concluded that at least for the Pacific and Southeast Asian regions. There is state practice supported by the practice of international organizations in relation to fixed baselines, and that practice is widespread and representative among states of these regions as well as consistent. However, they concluded that the existence of opinion euros is not yet that evident. So we effectively have an emerging customary norm within the region. And of course the law of the sea has a strong tradition of developing maritime entitlements through custom which are subsequently codified. But my question is whether in light of the urgency of the situation and the implications of sea level rise for both national and regime security, whether we can wait for a customary norm to crystallize. So in the final couple of minutes of my remarks I would like to posit a pragmatic but imperfect solution that particularly affected states, especially in the Indo-Pacific could adopt, which would increase legal certainty around this issue. That solution is the adoption of an agreement modifying the law of the sea conventional uncross to expressly permit and recognized fixed baselines and or outer limits that do not change in response to sea level rise. Modification agreements are permitted under Article 41 of the Vienna Convention of the Law of the Treaties as you can tell I'm not even a recovery I like my law, provided that those agreements comply with certain conditions. These include that they are not prohibited by the treaty in question. They're not incompatible with the object and purpose of that treaty, and they do not affect the enjoyment by the other parties of their rights under the treaty. Uncloss itself specifically permits modification agreements in Article 311 of the Convention on broadly the same conditions. A limitation of this solution, hence imperfect pragmatic is that a modification agreement is applicable solely to the relations between the parties to the agreement. So this is obviously not ideal in this context, and it would require other states to become a part of the modification agreement, or to otherwise recognize the rights of states parties under that agreement. So why am I proposing a modification agreement on sea level rise. Well first the basis for such an agreement has already been developed by the state practice of Pacific Island states and to a lesser extent states elsewhere. There's also a strong degree of support for this practice from other states, particularly in the Pacific region including for example Australia and New Zealand. Pragmatically, the process of modification could be quick and simple certainly compared to an amendment of uncloss or the negotiation of a new standalone treaty. Third, such an agreement would not be compatible with the law incompatible with the law of the sea convention would not be incompatible with the law of the sea convention. It's worth pointing out as the authors of the International Law Commission first issue papers have done that while states have interpreted baselines as ambulatory under uncross. This in fact is not explicitly stated in class and there's no express provision that says baselines cannot be fixed. Furthermore, the rights and duties of other states are preserved under this mechanism states may object to or support a modification agreement, taking into consideration their obligations to support adaptation to climate change. And finally, a modification agreement will provide certainty and promote national and regime security and could operate as a pragmatic first step as customary international law will generally develops. And I look forward to the discussion this morning. Thank you very much. Thank you, Professor Scott for that and I'll note that you are zooming in from from New Zealand, which is a member of the UN Convention on Law of the Sea, unlike the United States, and we already need to modify this so I think at first the United States needs to modify the UN Convention on Law of the Sea and then we can move on to the modification piece as well. I did want to highlight for Miss Goodman, I'll open this up to you and other panelists. I'll start my video alright, you can hopefully see my bright shining shining face it is not. Okay, it's been stopped. Great. And so what I was hoping to do is there are some people who criticize this nexus between security national security and climate change on one group is frankly people who deny the climate science from the other group is sort of human rights and environmentalists that are very weary of this sort of securitization militarization of climate change as an environmental issue. And I'll open up to Miss Goodman and I want to get other thoughts on this as well. Is, is there anything to this criticism and how would you respond to this criticism that this is just the militarization of a core environmental issue. Okay, Mark, well thank you for that question. I think we have to break it down. I think the criticism has of securitization of climate has evolved out of concern that the solutions to the climate crisis might be in the military sector, which by and large they are not. So let's be very clear, that's a solution to climate change, whether it's the energy transition, reducing mitigation, reducing emissions mitigation adaptation for the most part are not in the military sector. We do need a whole, you know, a 3d approach diplomatically, but the development and the diplomatic these should lead, and the military should support it should. I've argued as I said in my remarks for a for a. I'm analyzing security, which is that the security sector itself and all of us have talked about this in different ways Alice, in particular, needs to lead by example get its house in order. Dan talked about it as well, you know, improved performance by reducing emissions do these been working on that with in fits and starts for several decades already. And also makes needs to make its installations and infrastructure resilient. And it needs to incorporate climate risk factors into its strategy plans policy operations at all levels in all theaters. So I think that's what that's what I how I would frame it I think it's sometimes it's an over generalization that doesn't get at what the real issue is. Great, thank you, Miss Goodman other panelists like to add to that. I'll just add a little bit. I don't see any basis for that concern. There's no incompatible there's no inconsistency between saying it's a incompatibility between saying it's a human rights issue which it is. There's also a security issue on climate change is going to have huge impacts on on human rights on security relations on migration on a whole series of different issues and so it's not an either or I guess, yes, the concern would be if the solution to climate change was military, but I don't think anybody is suggesting that's the implication of drawing a nexus between climate change and security. The role of the military I think in in addressing climate change is reducing its own impact on the climate system as sure just mentioned, and then also in responding to disasters military has capacity to be able to provide relief and relief and disasters. And so I think in that limited respect I could see a role for the military in responding to climate change itself, but I don't think that the purpose of drawing the connection between climate and security is to say that there's a military solution to it is to say that it's going to have the impacts of all different kinds, all different sorts and we need to be thinking about the security impacts, the impacts on security of climate change as well as impacts on human rights and other issues. Jump in here. I do think underlying that is the fear that we're going to see greater securitization of international relations as a result of climate change. In 2015, CNA, the think tank held some war games in New Delhi, India, where they were a scenario using future projections of climate. And Miss Hill I'm not sure if your, your screen is frozen that other people seeing her screen frozen or is it just me is frozen. Yeah, it's frozen. Well, we'll wait for Miss Hill to come back because I have another question for Professor Scott. And her remarks about the changing baselines and thank you, Professor Scott for that very informative PowerPoint discussion about where on close needs to go. I do want to ask you a subtext I think of the sea level rising and the need for baseline changes is that certain nations, not that far from New Zealand in the Pacific small island, developing states and other nations may be facing the real impacts of sea level rise, extreme flooding recurrent flooding, and by some estimates there could be lack of habitable land maybe even mass migration from from parts of the Pacific in the not too distant future. Judge Hill mentioned the Northern Triangle. Can you just add a little bit of context to what you're seeing with the Pacific migration and small island developing states, and how you see that playing out as a security issue. Yes, I think it certainly is an issue, not simply for this region, but I think some of the first migration as a consequence of climate change has in fact already taken place within states so essentially relocation of people within Fiji, as a consequence of of sea level rise. Certainly I think for states in the region there's quite a significant interest in that issue in terms of the numbers of people which may well be moving around and the obligations on states, potentially to take in those refugees I know this is something which both particularly New Zealand have considered from an international perspective there isn't really any consensus as yet as to kind of exactly what states are with respect to kind of mass migration in contrast to their obligations obviously with respect to individual regimes where that is essentially but I think that's a that's a very significant security issue we've certainly seen the consequence of sort of mass migration and movement of people's particularly in Europe for example back in 2016. So that is certainly part of the consideration so obviously the issue of kind of fixing sort of maritime boundaries may well sort of support resource type issues but it doesn't address issues where the land becomes uninhabitable and people are required to move. So I would certainly say that that is a very significant security issue, one which is being considered but is certainly not yet been resolved and of course involves considerations of refugee law human rights law, in addition to other bodies of law. Right, thank you for that Professor Scott and of course is a, is a not just a legal question but also maybe a moral ethical question was responsibility for developed nations in assisting the developing nations, oftentimes poor lacking the adaptation skills, if they need to leave or have to leave their lands. And I see Judge Hill is with us so I want to make sure that I that I give you an opportunity to complete your remarks, Miss Hill. Oh, thank you. Sorry for the technical difficulties. Really, the basic point was all the participants in this exercise or not all but many were surprised by how quickly it turned and that I think is an underlying fear that if we can't really address these issues, we will resort to a militarization and further arming and going down that path and that's what I think is why there's a some hesitancy about involving the National Security apparatus in climate change in a significant way. But that ignores the fact that there will be as was described right now by Professor Scott, many cascading impacts flowing from the changes that we're seeing from climate change that we need to be aware of and think about and plan for in the security establishment. Right, thank you for that Miss Hill and I to be clear I do not share those criticisms but that there is there is a small but vocal group of people out there that that do have that fear and I think a lot of it comes down to climate education and climate communication. In terms of what we're really talking about. If I could just open this up to I'll start Miss Goodman again but I'll open up to everyone here. What struck me about your comments and remarks is just how broad sweeping this issue of climate security is we started in the Pacific we talked about the Arctic went back down to governance issues and here. That's a response that natural disaster response. If I could just ask you Miss Goodman and then I'll open up to others. What do you think is one area of climate security that is not getting the attention it needs, or an area that we need to be focused more on because I think sometimes for people who are new to this area, they might get lost in all just the complexity of this topic. I mean that's, that's a great question Mark, I do think that you know for the Jagd community that's listening in here. I mean, understanding how your legal work will be affected by climate changes in, in particular like I really like Professor Scott's example because she focused very specifically on sea level rise risk in the Pacific region, and then proposed solution we can debate whether those are the right solutions, but she framed a very actionable problem that is occurring. You know, another area that's underappreciated, I think at this point is is he extreme heat and the impact on health. You know, I observed in my remarks that that's going to make large parts of South Asia doesn't have much air conditioning, potentially uninhabitable but what is it going to mean for our troops. We see more black flag days where troops can't train because it's too hot. What about deployments you know are we are are are mothers and fathers going to be willing to put their sons and daughters at risk into these extreme temperature and weather zones that's just one example and I think there are more so I think that for the Jagd community kind of pushing the envelope for how each climate peril, whether it's heat drought deforestation desertification sea level rise and in the specific theater and it's that's why I tried to lay out I thought my speech was a little dense but it had a lot of relevant content I thought that was to this, you know, to how to address this in the theater in the region, in ways that have to become actionable by the security community and I hope that you know our Jagd community will be on the front lines of helping policymakers and military officers interpret that. Thank you Miss Goodman, Professor Budanski or Miss Hill you want to add to that. I can speak, I think sherry is right on. It's if you as the Council to a military service whatever organizations persons you're helping. If you can ask the right questions, you can make a tremendous difference. Let's say, and I don't know all of your responsibilities but imagine that you're responsible for assisting in procurement. Is anyone asking the question, does this stuff work and hotter conditions. Are we getting what we need to get. Now that's not a legal question. That's a practical question does this a smart thing for us to do to go forward with this but what we need are people asking those questions across the board. So that we're making sure we're considering these issues before we march down and create for example a plane that doesn't have enough. I can't take off on our runways is currently constructed, or that will get stuck in the tarmac. Or that we're constructing as we did on quadrillion, the atoll in the Pacific, a space fence at the cost of a billion dollars we can't contracted for it in 2014. At that time, we accepted an environmental review that said sea level rise is not a risk for an atoll in the Pacific that's pretty darn flat. Basic basic information would have told you that that's just not correct and of course when they did subsequent review four years later it was determined that salt water intrusion would affect the freshwater supplies and affect the island itself. So we need those kind of questions asked and if it doesn't come from others in military services certainly can come from an informed council saying have you thought about the whole range of things that could affect this project. And then Phoenix, and there was a couple of summers ago, there was a period when planes couldn't take off because it was too hot. They weren't built. So they could actually fly in the heat conditions that were in Phoenix at the time. So, yeah, picking up on the comment just made, you know, one needs to be thinking about all those kind of issues when you're designing new weapons, new military systems. So just bring up a totally different point you asked if there are things that are being overlooked or maybe not getting enough attention. And something I've been working on recently that I don't think does get enough attention is climate engineering as a potential way of addressing climate change because having been involved in the climate negotiations now for almost 30 years and seeing the limited progress that's been made in actually reducing emissions. I think one needs to be thinking seriously about alternatives that may prove to be necessary to try to address some of the tremendously catastrophic climate impacts that we might be seeing. And climate engineering is one way of doing that that's using various technological means to try to reduce warming. So it's getting some attention, but one of the issues climate engineering raises is the security issue to what a degree could could climate engineering be used in a hostile way. Could it provoke conflicts. It's maybe one of the approaches to climate change that would have the most immediate security implications where the Security Council or the international security system would have to be able to try to figure out what to do if a country decided to go ahead and begin with engineering the climate unilaterally or in a small group. So I think that's an issue that hasn't been thought about enough probably hasn't been thought about so much I'm not sure how much it's been thought by the security establishment, but I think it's something worth considering. I will just echo that point that was included in the executive order drafted on national security and climate change that we should be watching for geoengineering efforts it could be may not even be a state actor it could be just a billionaire or someone who wants to engage in this. And then the Trump administration as I recall did give several million dollars to this effort to be able to increase detection of geoengineering across the globe and that is very important that we understand whether you believe in G or not believe but whether you support G and engineering or not. It's critical for the United States to understand what efforts could be underway and how those could affect our security. Thank you for that, Professor Bedansky. And I believe there is a treaty that sort of overlooked the environmental modification treaty but it's applicability to climate really has not been theorized or addressed heavily by scholars. Maybe it's the subject of our next lower review article. And there is a difference between geoengineering which is changing the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gas emissions sort of an Elon Musk type approach to changing the climate and also different engineering steps such as carbon sequestration and things along those lines which have shown some promise but they're sort of high risk, you know, in high and high costs to get them get them started. I didn't want to turn to Professor Scott briefly because I think we have a fair amount of number of questions and all of them are directed at you, and it's three o'clock in New Zealand so I'm going to pick one that I thought was very interesting. And you can go from there. This question is from Abdullah Al-Areef, and he asks that with sea level rise, it's going to impact small island states, and they may well disappear at some point in the future so related to the question I asked you. His point is asking you about the number of or what would happen to the maritime entitlements and their rights over marine resources following the maritime zones lost under the ocean so I'm not sure if you have thought about that. There's several questions in the Q&A, which you should also feel free to respond to about sea level rise and maritime zones. Thank you very much Mark and I'm delighted to see that it's obviously generated a bit of interest. I think in relation to the question which Abdullah Al-Areef has asked, there certainly has been quite significant academic consideration of this issue. There are a number of excellent books and articles sort of considering this particular problem. I think for a sort of an international law point of view, you know, we don't have a solution. So the idea of maritime zones is that they are predicated on the basis of land territory. So the assumption is if you have no land territory then there are no maritime zones from which essentially to make a claim. So that potentially could lead to very significant inequities and depending on, you know, what happens in terms of peoples there may well be really valid reasons to sort of maintaining some form of a maritime zone or at least maintaining sort of privileged access to the resources within that area. But this is something which I think we're going to have to grapple with. We certainly don't have the tools under current international law to really deal with that or at least current international law would simply essentially mean that there is no state, there are no maritime zones, but that I think is very problematic from an equitable point of view. So there are lots of sort of suggestions around sort of a de-territorialised state. So having some sort of a state entity or a quasi-state entity, sort of essentially separating out the idea of territory from state and indeed a people. I'm not at all quite theoretical at this stage, but I think over the next sort of 10, 20 years they're really going to come to the fore of international lawyers. Mark, if I may perhaps just briefly address perhaps a couple of the issues raised by some of the questions, I won't be able to get all of them and I'm really happy for people to contact me directly. I'm interested in, I think it's Stephen Keating's question, which I think has been pushed to the top about whether potentially this mechanism could be used to sort of expand maritime zone seawood and I can certainly see that that might be a consideration. The ILA and indeed I think states which are supporting this approach of this idea of fixing maritime zones, not the modification as such, have made it really clear that the base points must be determined in accordance with international law as it stands. So the idea is this shouldn't really be used or can't be used as a mechanism to actually increase your maritime zone. But I think it raises a really interesting question about states which have reclaimed land. And for me, I think a really big question in this whole area is if we do adopt some sort of a solution which allows these states to fix maritime zones, are we confining it to those states which are affected by sea level rise as a consequence of climate change? Because of course there are a range of reasons why coastlines will vary, and why actually maybe a number of states would quite like to do this which might be unconnected to climate change. So I think Stephen raises an interesting question in the sense of how broad should this go, and are we simply looking at sea level rise as a consequence of climate change, or is it potentially more more generally. I think the field raises I think a really valid question about, well if you have a maritime boundary delimitation treaty or an agreement or a decision of a court, then isn't that essentially fixed? And the answer is yes it is fixed, so that is a potential solution and that has been suggested. But about half maritime boundaries globally have not been finally delimited, so it's only a partial solution. And of course for many particularly Pacific Island states they don't necessarily need to delimit the boundary essentially with another state. We're talking about sort of outer limits as well. So I think that's a partial solution but for me that's not a full solution because it doesn't really cover the entire range of boundaries which we may will have to address. And I don't think it necessarily provides that certainty. If you have a look at the statements coming out of the Pacific, there's a real desire for actually creating some certainty around those entitlements and around the resources. So I think leaving it simply to individual delimitation or potential dispute resolution doesn't really create that certainty. And just very quickly to finish off, Andrew Norris I think raises a really interesting suggestion about working through regional fisheries management organizations he quite rightly points out that a lot of this is actually about fisheries that's a real concern. And of course fixing your maritime boundaries won't necessarily address full issues relating to fisheries because of course fish may well move or likely to move as a consequence of changing conditions so they don't necessarily respect those boundaries. But certainly that is potentially one option and I think that's something definitely worth exploring. Again, I think perhaps just the sort of the concern I would have about that is that you're still then dependent essentially upon these states negotiating with or working with a group of states through a regional fisheries management organization. And I think there's a question as to whether that's, you know, appropriate, given you're talking about essentially territorial rights associated with a state. But I'm really happy for any of those individuals to contact me directly and perhaps to continue that conversation. So thank you very much for all those wonderful. Thank you, Professor Scott for for running through the queue so effectively and succinctly. I believe Commander petter we actually are at a time. And, and I want to be respectful everyone's time and the work colleges schedule here as it is 1220. So with that, thank you so much Miss Goodman, Professor Bodansky, Miss Hail Professor Scott joining us please get some sleep in New Zealand, and hopefully you can, we'll solve the baseline issue shortly. Thank you so much for joining the panel today. Thank you. Thank you so much Mark you did a great job. And thanks. Great panelist, thank you all my panelists. Thank you as well. You never thank you masterfully done. Great thanks to Deputy Under Secretary Goodman for her, her leadership on this issue, such a long time and thank you to the expert panelists for their commitment to this issue, especially Karen. As we've said it is so, so late where you are and we appreciate you given time for this discussion. It is, let's do this next year. Let's do this next year and let's have it for 90 minutes because it's a lot, there's a lot, a lot to get through. Yes, for sure was well. Thanks. Thanks, Professor Nevin it is minute 22 on my clock here in the East Coast and we will reconvene at minute 30 for the Arctic panels we will see everyone at minute 30 blow welcome back from our break. We will move on to session 10 where we will discuss certain developments in the Arctic. This panel will be moderated by Professor Katazina Zisk of the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies she will be accompanied by Professor Timo Quivorova, the University of Lapland, and Professor Suzanne alone, the University of Montreal. Dr. Zisk. Welcome, I turn the floor over to you. Thank you very much. It's, it's a great pleasure to be here. I am delighted to have the opportunity to chair this panel. Our discussion will focus on on the rule of law and great power competition in the Arctic. We will look at the intersection between these two important aspects of the Arctic dynamics that we have observed in the upper the past at least 15 years in particular. So we will look at how these dynamics both happening in the Arctic region but also beyond the Arctic region the spillover effects from from other regions, how they affect stability and security in the Arctic region. Since the turn of the millennium, the Arctic has been receiving a growing international interest and as the previous panel has also pointed out, climate change, of course, has been just important, important factor that has spurred a number of important changes in the region, especially because, because the region is changing faster than any other place on earth, twice the global average rate, leading to abrupt and sustained collapse of ice coverage. And basically what we are witnessing is the opening of the fifth ocean right on the North Americas and Europe's northern perimeter, which has obviously profound implications, including geopolitical implications, creating on the one hand unprecedented development opportunities, political, economic and military, including the fact that we have new potentially strategically important sea lines of communication opening in the polar region, easier access to abandoned rich energy resources valuable minerals metals abundant fish resources, but at the same time the development has also led to to heating up the geopolitical tensions in the region, bringing to the surface some of the remaining unresolved legal issues, including principles governing the access to this new maritime polar routes opening up there. Even though the Arctic has remained a largely a cooperative space free of armed conflict, the region has nonetheless reemerged after basically a hiatus of more than 20 years as an arena of for international competition, including military competition. And one major factor that has contributed to that have been Russia's policies, Moscow has sharply increased its military activity since 2007 and engaged in a large scale military modernization build up over the past 14 years. And what is important is that the Russian activists in the Arctic cannot be seen as isolated from what Russia is doing in other places, and Russia has been increasingly assertive. This has been observed in form of cyber attacks disinformation campaigns interference in electoral processes in Western countries. And of course the use of armed forces to achieve foreign objectives has been very high on the agenda. And these policies have triggered the largest reinforcement of NATO's collective defense since the end of the Cold War, including in the Arctic and the North Atlantic, which sets us as the reestablishment of the second conflict in 2018 to counterbalance the Russian, the growing Russian presence in the region with the creation of NATO Atlantic command last year dedicated to protect the critically important shipping lanes not least critically important for US military investments to Europe. So we've seen of course also NATO in the United States stepping up their naval surface naval presence in the region air patrolling strengthening existing facilities infrastructure etc. So, in general, there has also been a move towards strengthening cooperation and partnerships in the Arctic region, which by the way the United States consider the greatest strategic asymmetric advantage of arrivals in the Arctic, and therefore the milestone of the US regional strategy. We've seen spillover effects from global dynamics into the Arctic, which has been possible also in the form of of the US Chinese competition spilling over into the Arctic region. And so one of the central and also the hardest objectives for policymakers in the region has been to find the balance between on the one hand, responding to the changing Arctic natural and strategic environment by providing credible military presence, measured deterrents. And on the other, by continuing to strengthening and building upon the regional venues, the broad governance and cooperation network in order to maintain and enhance the regional stability. And so today we have with us, leading Arctic experts that have influenced the Arctic debate over many years influence our thinking about the present state of the Arctic, and also about how the future may develop. And in order of speaking we have Professor Chimo Koyburova as been mentioned from the University of Lapland and Professor Zanlalon from the University of Montreal. And they are going to shed light on some of the key aspects of the regional development and share with us insights on as I mentioned on the intersection between governance and collaboration on the one hand, and also competition in the Arctic with implications this dynamics have for regional stability. Each speaker has around 10 minutes for the remarks and after which we will have an opportunity to engage in a discussion and welcome you to use the chat function to send us your questions and comments. So, let me then invite Professor Koyburova to take the virtual floor. Chimo the floor is yours. Okay. Greetings from Ravan and in Finland from the Arctic. And kind thanks for the, for the organizers for the invitation important conference, thanks to the stock stockstone center James Michael, many others. I will say a few words about the development of the Arctic governance mostly from from from an international perspective. First I will start by elaborating on the basic framework of Arctic governance. So, you'll see, I had in an original. The idea was that there was there would be two maps. Okay, now they are there, depicting the Arctic and the Antarctic. So, first of all, the Arctic is a full opposite to the to the Antarctic and not only in terms that the other is a continent surrounded by oceans, but and the other is a is an ocean surrounded by continents. But there are significant differences in the way these areas are governed. Sovereignty of the eight states and their sovereign marine rights cover much of the Arctic region in total contrast to the Antarctica, where there are no active sovereigns, and it is governed by an international governance regime called the Antarctic Treaty system. It is important to keep this in mind. And even authoritative forms like the European Union's parliament have suggested that the Arctic should be governed in a way similar to the Antarctica. Overall, because also say that the Arctic is a good example of multi level governance area where international law and policy national laws of the eight Arctic states, including the influence of the European Union in the European side of the Arctic. And also in some cases, customer governance systems of indigenous peoples are are important. If we examine the marine areas, which are melting as I speak, and dramatically so the volume of Arctic sea as present in the month of September has declined by 75% since 1979. And they are governed by the Constitution of the oceans law of the secret law of the sea convention as we have been described discussing here, manifestly mostly also customer international law, or the various international maritime organization convention, and many other global and semi global agreements. Also, what I want to highlight, it is important to realize that many important decisions over the Arctic are done outside of the Arctic. Many of the processes that determine the faith of the Arctic are governed globally, particularly the climate change. It is not enough that there are prevention measures laid down in the Arctic Council for black carbon and methane, if the Paris climate agreement doesn't start to function. And now, of course, we have some promising signs. In that respect, from from the US and and also from from China. In a similar way that the hard security environment of the Arctic is now it is characterized more and more by tensions between major powers in particular USA versus China and USA versus Russia. For instance, it seems to me that the perception that China is a threat in the Arctic is stemming more from global tensions between us and China rather than any real Arctic regional dynamics. Second, I will take a look at how Arctic international governance has evolved. So, looking at a couple of past decades, we have witnessed a lot of international cooperation in the Arctic, but virtually also more geopolitical tensions in the region in the in the few past years. The only standing collaborative international intergovernmental forum is the Arctic Council founded in 1996 focus on common issues related to the Arctic, in particular environmental protection sustainable development and explicitly excluding military security issues. It has also catalyzed three legally binding agreements between the eight Arctic states on search and rescue, also preparedness and response and scientific cooperation, all touching heavily also on marine areas. And tomorrow, as honorable Sherry Goodman already told us, we have the Foreign Minister's meeting of the Arctic Council in Reykjavik ending the Icelandic chairmanship and and commencing then the Russian chairmanship of the council. Arctic Ocean coastal states, so coastal states, so those five states, Norway, Denmark, Greenland, Canada, USA, Russia also started to convene in 2008, excluding Finland, Iceland, Sweden were members of the Arctic Council. But this forum did not evolve into a standing intergovernmental forum. Even if even if it was those states that did the groundwork for what became the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement signed in 2018 and soon to enter into falls. So we have clearly witnessed a lot of cooperation between the Arctic states. Yet it is also the case that we have in the few past years face more and more geopolitical tensions in the Arctic. Even if, for instance, the Arctic Council was able to almost without interruption, go about its business after the Crimean annexation and the sanctions regimes. It did have an impact on the heart security cooperation in the region. The Arctic chiefs of defense meetings were cancelled after the illegal Crimean annexation by Russia, and the Arctic Security Forces Roundtable, a kind of larger security forum, convenes nowadays without Russia. The turbulent Trump presidency had a chilling effect on the Arctic Council cooperation, especially for climate change cooperation in the council, but it also burns and the relations between USA and China USA and Russia in the Arctic as well. And finally, the US started to also pay attention to its diplomatic and military presence in the Arctic, which has kind of gradually become stronger. Currently, the relations between Russia and the Western member states of the Arctic Council are difficult because of the overall manifold tensions between Russia and the Western states, and many kinds of sanctions regimes at work for various countries. There are also problems in the relations between USA and China in the Arctic, but as I already argued, more related to their overall tensions. Finally, where should we go? Where should we then go from here? So there are two proposals to improve the Arctic international cooperation, which differ quite much from each other. The reason why they differ is that they are launched from different directions. So, first of all, for especially environmental NGOs, the main problem seems to be that there is no real governance mechanism to make decisions over the melting Arctic Ocean. They would like to see the Arctic states and perhaps some others to establish a regional cease agreement on the base of such models operating in the Baltic Sea or the Northeast Atlantic. And the Arctic states have not shown any political appetite for establishing such standing regional intergovernmental legal body as they have problems even with making the current Arctic Council an intergovernmental organization. Then from another direction, some academic think tanks have been unhappy about the fact that that military security issues have been excluded from the mandate of the Arctic Council. And that after the Crimean annexation, there are no forums for meeting and talking about hard security issues in the Arctic. The problem in this proposal for me personally is this. If we agree that the overall tensions in the Arctic do not derive from the Arctic competition type of scenarios, kind of scramble for resources between the Arctic states because of Arctic reasons in the Arctic. And the overall relations between Western States, Russia, USA, China spilling over to the Arctic. It doesn't seem justified to call for Arctic security forums as the problems lie elsewhere than in the Arctic. Yet, and this is to conclude the presentation, even if I do not see any grand solutions for Arctic international governance. I also remind ourselves that we have quite a lot of international cooperation and cooperative achievements in the Arctic that are functioning, even in these times of tensions. Thanks. Thank you very much, Tim. That was the perfect timing. Excellent 360 tour the Arctic governance. I have noted a couple of questions, but we will first listen to Professor Lalonde and her presentation and so, and then we will have the opportunity to comment and ask questions. Professor Lalonde, the floor is yours. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. I'd like to start by thanking Lieutenant Parmley and Commander Petta for their generous invitation in the Neighborhood College to participate in this session. I'm deeply honored to be involved in the Cushing conference. The Cushing conference just provided a terrific overview of international and regional cooperation in the Arctic, and he spoke of collaborative processes and even achievements, despite increasing geopolitical tensions between certain actors. I believe that the North American Arctic is another example of successful collaboration. In this case of bilateral cooperation, promoting defense and broad security interests, despite some sensitive disagreements. There can be no denying that a long standing disagreement exists between Canada and the United States in respect to the legal status of the Northwest passage within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The maritime boundary between the two neighbors and the Beaufort Sea has not yet been resolved. However, almost 60 years to the day on the 17th of May 1961, President Kennedy addressed the Canadian Parliament, and he provided some very sage insight into the US-Canada relationship. We are allies, he stated. This is a partnership, not an empire. We are bound to have differences and disappointments. We are equally bound to bring them out into the open, to settle them where they can be settled, and to respect each other's views when they cannot be settled. End of quote. I believe President Kennedy's insistence on respect for each other's views is an essential, if not the essential ingredient for any meaningful bilateral cooperation. And it has been the cornerstone of Canada, US collaborative efforts in the Arctic over the course of many decades. In the establishment of NORAD in 1957, as a bi-national centralized air and eventually maritime defense command, I think is compelling evidence of mutual trust and respect. In the third preambular paragraph of the NORAD agreement, which was recently in 2006 renewed, both Canada and the United States attest to their conviction that such cooperation is a proven and flexible means to pursue shared goals and interests, that it remains vital to their mutual security, and that it is compatible with their national interests. Collaboration is thus recognized not only as a valuable and efficient means to achieve shared objectives, but recognized also as a powerful mechanism for the advancement of national interests. A compelling example of President Kennedy's respectful understanding is the 1988 Canada-US agreement on Arctic cooperation. It is widely understood, at least in Canada, that if an agreement was reached, was eventually reached, it was thanks to the close relationship between President Reagan and Prime Minister Moroni. But more importantly, again, according to Canadian lore, that it was thanks to President Reagan's deep understanding of the political sensitivity of the Northwest Passage issue on the Canadian side and his remarkable determination to find a way forward. Thanks to the ingenuity of lawyers at the State Department and Canadian Foreign Affairs, the agreement provides that US icebreakers proposing to engage in research while transiting through the Northwest Passage will ask the Canadian government for permission to do so, and that Canada will, of course, give its consent. This arrangement is entirely consistent with the regime governing marine scientific research as laid out in the law of the sea convention. And yet, of course, it's a terribly elegant way out of the impasse. And in addition, article four of the agreement explicitly states that nothing in the agreement can prejudice either parties legal position. Or no concession, no dilution of Washington's legal position, or indeed it's wider freedom of the seas policy, while I would suggest conferring the benefits of having the waters under the sovereignty of its NORAD partner. Canada and the US have their profound ways to set their legal differences aside and get on with the business of resolving issues of mutual interest and concern, and this collaboration in regards to the marine Arctic occurs at multiple levels. Time permits only a few examples. This summer, the largest icebreaker in the US Coast Guard fleet, the Healy, will be transiting through the Northwest Passage. During the announcement during his state of the Coast Guard addressed in March, Admiral Schultz made a point of emphasizing that the mission was being planned along with Foreign Affairs Canada, and a spokesperson for the US Coast Guard later confirmed that the mission was definitely not a fun off. Of course, the Healy's transit is covered by the 1988 Arctic cooperation agreement, there will be 20 scientists on board and they will be conducting scientific research. Still, as professor before from the University of Fairbanks in Alaska has emphasized the announcement and way with the tone of it sent a clear message that the official status of the Northwest Passage is somewhat less important than being able to collaborate and with expectations and confidence with close partners. It was certainly a very welcome message in Canadian circles, contrasting with the headlines in late 2018 and 2019 that announced plans for US Navy freedom of navigation ops in the Arctic, without saying exactly where in the Arctic. So let's take a look at the meeting of the Arctic Security Working Group that's chaired by Joint Task Force North up in a yellow night. The Canadian Coast Guard provided some details of the Healy strip and mentioned that a SAR exercise with the Healy was being planned in Resilio Bay in early September. In that forum, the Healy strip was described as tremendously valuable, a tremendously valuable opportunity, a joint research and educational collaboration at a time when conditions in the Northwest Passage and indeed throughout the Arctic are changing dramatically. I should add that this joint venture, no doubt has been greatly facilitated by the relationships that have been built through the annual summits that occur between the Canadian and US Coast Guards. The Arctic Security Working Group was also briefed by Canadian Armed Forces on its Nanook operations this summer. Top Nanook to Gallic is the maritime deployment component of the Nanook series. This summer in early August, Canada's Goose Bay, a Kingston class coastal defense vessel with the Harry DeWolf, the first of Canada's new Arctic offshore patrol ships will sail from Halifax North in company with one US Navy Arleigh Burke class destroyer and one or possibly two Coast Guard cutters. And they will head for Iqaluit in Manavut in Enroute, the Canadian and American ships will be conducting multi ship maneuvers warfare and security serials ranging from seamanship evolutions force protection training to weapons binaries. As the commander of Canada's maritime forces Atlantic has emphasized off Nanook aims to foster multinational cooperation and trust trust as a catalyst for capable and adaptable maritime forces in a challenging Arctic marine environment. The Canadian and American ships will eventually rendezvous with the Canadian Coast Guard Pierre Edson in Iqaluit and will join JTFN for the fatigiate portion of off Nanook. This will consist of a series of maritime security events that will culminate in mid August with a major maritime rescue operation this year it's a cruise ship in distress. US participation is seen as critical as it is widely acknowledged and I would say not just on the Canadian side that in such a disastrous scenario in the far north support from neighbors and Coast Isles will be very likely be needed. We have carried the wolf and the US ships will then sail to Nuuk for a fuel stop, and there are plans for the Danish Navy to participate in some of the training serials as the ships get closer to Nuuk. After the fuel stop in Nuuk, the US ships will head south towards Halifax, and the Canadian Defense Department has offered them the opportunity to have an encounter exercise using the goose bay as the vessel of interest. At the end of state to state cooperation, northern communities are also collaborating and these will be my last examples. The Alaskan Arctic Waterways Safety Committee was established in October 2014 as a self governing multi stakeholder group that is focused on improving communications, mapping and marine policies to promote maritime safety to protect the marine climate and also critically to preserve the lifestyles of those who live in the Arctic. The committee is fantastic is made up of a wide array of maritime users and stakeholders. I mean, from subsistence hunters to local and tribal governments to advocacy groups and even industry representatives from oil and gas developers tug and barge operators etc. Thanks to Canadian federal funding, community members from Cambridge Bay. It's a small hamlet of about 1400 inhabitants at the southeast corner of Victoria Island and right on the shore of one of the northwest passage routes. We're able to travel to Alaska and to learn to learn from the Alaskan Arctic Waterways Safety Committee and the result of that engagement. Well, the creation of the Victoria Island. A Waterways Safety Committee. Last example, the Alaskan Marine Exchange, for its part, has been instrumental in the establishment of a very exciting new project, the Inuit Marine Monitoring Program in Nunavut. A program that couples a seasoned experienced Inuit hunters as marine monitors with real time vessel tracking technology. The Alaskan Marine Exchange has supplied many of the terrestrial AIS deployed across Nunavut and has also assisted in the training of the Inuit monitors. And there are many, many other examples of maritime cooperation. In concluding, I would just like to emphasize that it is because the Canada US relationship of trust and respect is so well and so long established that meaningful cooperation has withstood the vagaries of political personalities and specific agendas, irrespective of short term rips, the recognition that collaboration and cooperation serves the interests of both states and jurors. And I would suggest that climate change and the foreign interest it has sparked in the Arctic region, including in the North American Arctic, has only confirmed the necessity for such a strong partnership. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Suzanne. It was a brilliant presentation, which took us, you know, from on the different levels from the more overarching broader Arctic regional to the local. I think there is a lot to to touch upon but since I since I have you here I think I would, I would follow up on the question and international cooperation if I may Suzanne. So, you know, I've mentioned in my introductory remarks, what's what we've observed over the past at least 14 years, basically, but really since the turn of the millennium the increasing international interest for the Arctic from different parts of the country, which have brought to the surface a broad spectrum of challenges and opportunities so if you could elaborate on on how this foreign interest has impacted the US Canadian relationship. And, and if you can say something about how do you see the optimal outcome moving ahead, especially as the Biden administration is taking is starting showing us what do what they have in cards when it comes to to the Arctic region. Thank you so much for the question. I'm just very quickly it's just that. When I first got interested in Northwest passage debate, almost like 20 years ago. It was really something that Canadian and US lawyer lawyerly types like to debate I mean that I've lost count of how often James Kraska and I have disagreed. And it was seen as this like quite little issue between us, you know, and, and what I feel, and I think this is my, my pitch for increased and continued cooperation is I think we're losing control or it's becoming much larger. And I see a certain trend of interest you yourself are mentioning new sea lines of communication, opening up of Arctic shipping routes and I was trolling through Arctic policies and of course, the Chinese white paper in 2018 has ambiguous language. And so, you know, there are groups the Northwest Passage which Arctic shipping routes and then further in the paragraph talks about freedom of navigation and, and so, while understanding the US position it's like a plea to maybe have a solid a common front here, because for Canada is a critical issue, more ships, more activity, so not just, you know, ships for resource exploitation but just more ships, and there's also mounting pressure from our indigenous citizens in the north, and constitutional obligations to consult on marine areas in the Canadian Arctic archipelago and so it's trying to make sure that we're respectful of rights, making sure of course we're open to navigation and shipping but we want it to be responsible navigation and shipping and respectful of priorities identified by indigenous citizens. And so, and so that's why I think, you know, you should have seen the email tracks bouncing around after Admiral Schultz made his, his announcement just this, this, like reset of, we don't agree but, you know, let's work together and I think this is going to be critical for Canada and we need that kind of sort of way forward, if I could say, thank you. Thank you very much Susan I think I mean there are many interesting issues but I just sitting here wondering how the Russian chairmanship of the Arctic Council which they're taking over tomorrow for the next three years how this for instance will it will impact probably a number of key aspects of the regional development, including it will be very interesting to see how they were treating the issue of the rights of the indigenous people in the region as we, as they move through the, the broad spectrum of economic, you know, diplomatic but also military issues this is not a part of the Arctic Council agenda. And here I would like to move to Timo, before I open the floor for for our, our public to comment and ask questions I have already, I have noted some already Timo. My question concerns the, the Arctic, the chairmanship the Russian chairmanship of the Arctic Council. As I said, they are taking over and and the Russia has come up with the with the program for the tune on should they mentioned a number of key objectives like the environmental protection, social and economic development and not least, the role of the Arctic Council and they said they are really strengthening the role of the Arctic Council as the key platform for the multilateral cooperation. So my question to you is, is how do you see in your opinion how Russia may achieve the objective of strengthening the Arctic Council how they may be moving ahead through this forum. But also in general how do you see how they will be moving in which direction they will be moving the Arctic governance more broadly. Thanks. Very good question. I think that I think it's very important to also like, like, like, separate the kind of Arctic Council chairmanship of Russia from its kind of general policy stance, general policies about the Arctic because they, they obviously serve different policies when when the country is a chair of the Arctic Council, obviously it serves also the basic objectives of this organization. And Russia has really, I think that its chairmanship programs it hasn't laid out very detailed chairmanship program but those segments that it has opened up, especially the strengthening of the Arctic Council it stems already from a very long period of work, you know, throughout years with different championships about trying to come up with a long term strategy for the Arctic Council, with which we could kind of, in a kind of systematic manner, strengthen the Arctic Council. And it does clearly put a lot of effort seems to put a lot of at least verbal effort effort in that it also celebrates the Arctic Council as one of the few forums where it can where it can constructively work with the western states of the of the Arctic Council. And I even proposed that these Arctic defense chiefs meeting should be resumed, which was, at least for me for myself, a bit of a bit of a surprise. And it's also important to now kind of think about this as a, as a, as a kind of reset in the sense that the Trump administration obviously had a, as I already called it a chilling effect on on the Arctic Council cooperation because they really on its very core to the kind of climate change cooperation. And now we have Biden administration so even if Biden has been very tough on on Russia on in general level and that's of course the kind of kind of overall level level relations. Obviously his administration is very much kind of advocating the combat of climate change and adaptation to its impacts in the Arctic. So I'm pretty sure that that US and Russia can find itself a new in Arctic Council cooperation. But of course we have to keep in mind all the time these kind of deepening other disturbing signs that we are getting that Russian and Western, especially USA relations are getting all the time. More and more difficult issues and more and more sanctions regimes, etc. But overall, I would say that there are more positive signs that the Arctic Council cooperation during the rain of Russia will go to the right direction. Thank you very much, I think I fully agree with you and I would also add that we've seen that despite this quiet women increasing and hitting out of the geopolitical tensions over the past decade and more that that the countries are able to cooperate and I think from you know from my studies of Russia it's also been clear that Russia has been very capable of kind of keeping these things apart. They are very cooperative they're extremely interested of presenting themselves and being a reliable Arctic stakeholder, quite at the same you know and saying, basically since I've heard that phrase since 2009 that, you know there are no issues in the Arctic that that should be solved with military issues while at the same time of course we have all this military military build up which is as you mentioned in your presentation yes it does. Mostly is connected for instance in case of Russia to nuclear deterrence which is, you know, it's not about the Arctic region really, but there are also some aspects of that development that actually are aimed at military missions in the Arctic in the Arctic region but again they have been very able of keeping these things quite separate. We can of course discuss whether it's a good thing or not, but that's, that's another question we have a very good question from Steven Keating. So, in the chat, who asked the following if the Arctic ice melts that areas are no longer subject to the ice cover for most of the year. How do you see the uncle's article 234 being interpreted or applied, given the fact that the loss of ice may actually create even greater environmental risks. So let the Arctic Council address this impact of climate change, who would like to start Suzanne, please. This is a, this is a very hot issue and there have been some published articles on this, notably by Russian colleagues in ocean development international law so thank you for the question. I love though that you, you know, you've, you've given me the life, life jacket at the end. Because of course Canada and also Russia are very interested in article 234 were instrumental in negotiating it with it's one of the only provisions in the law the sea convention that you can actually say three states created it. The US, Canada and Russia, and it's supposed to be this like source of environmental jurisdiction, because the ice is the waters are covered by for most of the year, and I was for most of the year. And so, of course, the ice melting has created this, this, this debate and this reflection over what if there's not ice for most of the year. I'm great. It's, it's, it's an argument. Like I'm pleading. I would hope that the reason that you know that the reason for adopting 234 comes into play as we move forward and that was these are sensitive waters dangerous to navigate pollution would be devastating so because if you start to just say what's it going to be once we like when it's 49% of the there's no ice okay 234 doesn't apply but the following year there's a lot of ice because there is variability so one year 234 applies the other it doesn't. I think, as Stephen was saying, it was about environmental protection so there'll be ice there's there'll be ice during the winter months there's always going to be like a single year ice. There'll be ice and as long as they're ice, and they are, you know, covered a lot by ice, whether it's most of the I just hope we don't take that kind of really technical picky. But that's a Canadian saying that over to. Thank you Susan team on. Would you like to add something. Nothing really I mean, obviously like like the. I think that it is normally kind of addressing in terms that there's a justification for the for using article 234 kind of melts away that's that's kind of the normal framing of it. So, but I, but I do agree on many of the arguments that that's done laid out, just to mention that there was this Arctic Council, kind of component to the question so so obviously Arctic Council doesn't have any, any kind of mandate to, to know say anything about these issues. Another question, which is to Professor Lalonde, Professor Zisk. If more flag states get involved in Arctic shipping. Do you see more states taking more explicit positions against Russian and Canadian positions I interpreted that it concerns the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea route. Would that make the US position more or less important. I think there is I mean I that's you know I've been basically from the beginning this is this is one of this unresolved legal issues my I definitely think that there is a potential that that the issue so let's let's me take let's me take the northern that that there is a potential that this can that the. So the interpretation. The Russian basically claiming the Northern Northern Syriac as under Russian jurisdiction, you know, as you know, the Northern Syriac is can be a number quite varying shipping lanes depending on ice conditions sometimes even crossing into the high seas, but are in along this passage that are considered by Russia internal wonders and why the United States and other nations they would consider an international straight and that's the subject to to the right for it for transit passage and so that's that's one of the bone of contention that has been actually this issue has been mentioned the phonops so they mentioned by by the former US administration, the Secretary of the Navy there that yes there might be a freedom of navigation operations conducted in the art which also was was you know as we also looked on the Russian side as well as I think there is a potential but I also will think that as we try I think we all sort of try to point out that the Arctic is extremely complex when it comes to this, you know, this various levels combining so you know the regional subregional but also global issues going over into the Arctic and I think I think that would depend this kind of issue could heat up and and and become a problem depending on the on the function of the relations for instance between Russia and the United States between the China and Russia, China and the United States I think this will be a function of the broader sort of dynamics on going on the on the international space but again as the importance of this environment and this inviability of this maritime channels increases I think there is a potential that this issue will have to be sort of that that would be my my take on it to them. Thank you for the question. I've been, I don't know I've been waging this battle. I'd love for the world at large to not link the Northern Sea route with the Northwest passage. If you go back to Timo's map, I mean, the various routes of the Northwest passage cut through 40% of Canada's landmass. I challenge anyone out there to find any other international straight that cuts through 40% of a state's landmass, because remember Catherine Zena was saying the transit passage that's also an air corridor an international air corridor so ships of all nations civilian military aircraft let's go cutting across the archipelago, and we're talking about 94 major islands, 36,469 minor islands so it's, you know, add to that that Canada's shipping regime has been in place since the early 1970s Lloyd's insurance and London loves the Canadian regime so much that it's asking ships to be consistent with those rules if they want insurance. Canada has stepped softly softly. We don't demand icebreaker escort we certainly don't charge. We don't even charge for SAR for search and rescue when some crazy European wants the adventure of a lifetime and it's going to go through the Northwest passage on this little sailboat. We have tried, I would think to be transparent and reasonable and saying, look, these are for environmental and security and to protect the waters so we hope that. Yes, there and because you know I think it was true to senior with less hair in 1969 that says, of course we were not going to block off the Northwest passage to ships we just want it to be done right. So I think in those, there may be and I was saying I was talking about the Chinese policy, Germany has some weird language and it's updated revised guidelines but. Yeah, it pressure might mount but I think I think hopefully the regime the Canadian regime isn't so like hard hitting that ships or operators will feel. To me, how would you say like limited in their rights, and a last pitch, I don't think it's in the US interest, I understand I've always been told by my colleagues by American colleagues even from Ashrochi. Decades ago, look, it's not about Canada, we just have to protect our position elsewhere so I don't think it's in the US position. I suddenly have an international waterway and an international airspace cutting through northern North America so my hope is between Canada in US, my pitch in my presentation, let's keep things going. And hopefully Canada can massage feelings internationally and say look and last point, I promise. In any case, apparently the transporter shipping route will open soon, which is catastrophic but nevertheless, and the Northwest passage isn't even going to be interesting for in any case and I'm really happy about that actually. Thank you very much, Suzanne and I think we are we are approaching the end of the panel but Timo, you will actually have the last words so please you have a you have had a comment. Yeah just just about those two passages I would say that I'm still of the opinion that I think to the historic internal waters argument to some extent it carries some some problems. But on the other hand there is the new occupation argument which which I think that is a strong one. So I think that the the northern sea route like legislation I think that is in clear violation of the law of the sea in the Russian side. So, so I don't think that there is any kind of any kind of real scholarly debate, I mean, let's say outside of Russia, about whether it is, but I just don't see anyone. In maritime regions and challenging the Russian position, you know with them having all their military might exactly in the region so so it is indeed very difficult to imagine. Thanks. This would have been certainly. I would be again about the geopolitical sort of background for this kind of move would have to be quite particular because that would be quite escalating a move but I mean again it's, we can imagine that but but that would have quite profound consequences. So we we have unfortunately we have if I'm not mistaken we have run out of time. So, I would love to thank you. I think, thank you team all and Suzanne for for excellent contribution barely and talks, and I will give words to come under pressure. Professor Quiberova and Professor alone. Thank you so much. We were lucky to have your rich expertise in such a compact amount of time. We wish you all the best moving forward and for the audience it is now minute 20. We will reconvene to talk a little more about legal unreported and unregulated fishing at minute 50. We will see you then. Hello and welcome back from our break we're about to begin session 11, which addresses legal unreported and unregulated fishing often referred simply as IUU fishing or IUUF. IUU fishing is a multi faceted complicated issue and we're lucky to have with us today. Dr Whitley saw him Webber of the Center for strategic and international studies Captain Mike Sinclair of the United States Coast Guard, Miss Mavish madad from the department US Department of State, and Miss Karen Stouse from the US Department of Justice to talk further on this topic. With that captain Sinclair, I turn the floor over to you. Thanks Mike. Good afternoon, I'm Captain Michael Sinclair the Coast Guard's federal executive fellow at the Brookings Institution, and I'm delighted to be here today. Many thanks to the US Naval War College Stockton Center for hosting this discussion on illegal unregulated and unreported fishing. We are very pleased to have as our keynote speaker, Dr Whitley some Weber, the director of the Stevenson Ocean Center, excuse me the Stevenson Ocean Security Project Center for strategic and international studies and visiting professor from the University of Rhode Island Department of Marine Affairs. I'm really looking forward to his remarks. After his presentation. Dr Sun Weber will be joined in a panel discussion by Miss Mavish Medid from the Department of State's legal office and Miss Karen Stouse from the Department of Justice but first, I'd like to just offer a brief overview to help set the stage for where we're going this afternoon. Fishing is a 401 401 billion dollar global industry. It provides 20% of the protein intake for nearly half of the world's population. Global fish consumption has been on the rise for almost 60 years, yet 93% of the world's fish stocks are fully exploited over exploited or significantly depleted in global climate change is strongly exact excuse me in global climate change is adversely affecting stocks over exploitation has many roots but is strongly exacerbated by illegal unregulated and unreported fishing and this issue is particularly acute in the developing world where coastal states may not have the fiscal capacity to field robust patrol measures deter, check, counter and respond to fishing within their exclusive economic zones. Fish stock sustainment requires management and management really needs a regional focus because fish well that they move illegal unregulated and reporting fishing characterizes actors, both state and non state attempts to circumvent that management management can take forms for of coastal state measures regional there are regional or multilateral or bilateral agreements that cover many different types of fish or regulate things like gear and vessel size there are fish specific measures. And in some cases there are smaller bilateral and bilateral enforcement agreements between nations. Our panel is Ms Mavish madame from the Department of State's Office of the legal advisor is going to discuss some of these international vehicles a little later in the afternoon. With these issues I you fishing can lead to a true tragedy that commons or race to the bottom, with the actions of but a few malign actors can have far reaching intertwined global effects. These include threats to the environment, specifically vulnerable fish stocks and increasingly threats international and regional stability. For a few reasons first food and security can drive instability. And as China has continuously demonstrated with its fishing fleet, the world's largest, and that in many cases also doubles as regional maritime militia I you fishing can be used as a means to exploit the other nations attempt to exercise the minion and control over disputed maritime areas in some cases bully neighbors. Chinese distant water fishing fleets off of South America at the end of last year in the beginning of this year is a great example of that, along with the Chinese history of operating in a near African waters. And one wonders whether the burgeoning Chinese operating port facility in Djibouti has a future as a fishing vessel staging location. And then most recently we've seen activity at White Sun reef, which is a maritime territory in dispute between China and the Philippines, and this dispute remains ongoing. Regardless Chinese IU fishing be it off the coast of South South America, or Africa, and the Chinese fishing fleets in the South China Sea arise from many of the same competitive drivers access dominion and sovereignty and rely on the same tools subsidies vessels and capacity. Both are indicators of how China visas fishing fleet as a useful tool for state action with Chinese fishing shenanigans aside. And it's not just China, for example, South Korea and India have also historically engaged in IUU activities in the United States has issued with hold release orders, covering catch from for Taiwanese fishing vessels due to forced labor concerns since 2019. And then closer to home the United States struggles mightily with Mexican launchers operating in the US easy. Part of the struggle with the with the Mexican launches links to a fundamental concept of international maritime law which generally prohibits criminal enforcement of fishing activities and that's codified at Article 73 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. You can imagine the policy purpose behind that, which is to try to avoid criminalizing the activity of the, the citizens of developing natures but there is an exception, and that exception at article 73 contemplates bilateral agreements between countries which that if both nations agree, can facilitate criminalization and I suspect that we'll hear from Dr somewhere a little bit about that shortly. And then in addition to the the the substantive, the substantive illegality of a certain fishing at fishing based activities there's the associated criminal activity beyond fishing itself, where there are significant evidence, significant evidence of other illegal acts specifically forced labor and human trafficking are our panel is Miss Karen Stous from the Department of Justice is is going to discuss this dynamic specifically has Mike noted IUU fishing is a complex complicated issue to help us better understand its relevance in the 21st century. I'm going to turn the floor over in just a second to our keynote speaker Dr with some lover for some additional foundational background and then we'll talk with Movish on the state of play on relevant international agreements that address IUU fishing, and then we'll hear some of the associated criminal criminal activity that we see time and time again from these cases from Karen, and hopefully we'll reserve 15 or 20 minutes towards the end of the the hour for your questions. As a reminder, if you have them please put them in the q amp a and I'll make sure to work them into that aspect of the presentation. And with that, with I'd like it to turn it over to you please take it away. Great. Thanks so much captain thanks for the introduction and thank you all for being here it's really quite an honor to join you all today to talk about this topic. It's something that I'm working on for a number of years and, and really pleased that it's become much greater interest across both the international policy and security communities. So, I'm going to start off and try to do something a little bit different than I normally do which is start off with just some brief remarks and then open up some slides because I think that they will actually help us to sort of think through this issue and some detail because as, as Mike mentioned it is fairly complex so hopefully that'll help us out but just just briefly I want to talk about this idea that we're facing an increasingly dynamic world. It's one that's moving away from steady state in terms of ecosystem change resource sustainability development great power competition. It's the new dynamism dynamism that is inherently challenging to the traditional us goals of peace stability and equitable growth. Among the regions most impacted by this dynamism are those that rely to great extent on marine resources as a major part of their natural wealth. Fish is both a dietary staple and quite literally the coin of the realm for much of the developing world. Threats this resource therefore matter in increasingly relevant ways as does the competition for its use and trade. IU fishing is among the most vexing of these challenges it presents both the direct threat to maritime resources by inhibiting sustainable management, but more broadly when supported as a defective state policy as it is by many coastal states that presents another significant crack in the already stressed infrastructure or global norms and collective governance that we've relied on for the last 75 years. These challenges will require us to forthrightly engage with the strategic implications of the IU threat. It will require new global commitments to transparency and collective management on the high seas. It will require the US to recognize and support the importance of this issue for many of our partners and allies, and that we assist in new ways with data sharing enforcement. Lastly, it will require a strong response to those states that continue engaging in sometimes predatory behavior, but disregarding global norms and responsible use of marine resources. So let's dive a little deeper on what I mean and let's start with this idea of dynamism so I'm going to share my screen now hopefully this works all right. So, just quickly I want to show some information from the recent IPC report on oceans in the cryosphere so this is just a few snapshots, don't have to pay too much attention to the details here, but just look at the trends and what we have done is ocean heat content over time so this is one of the aspects of global warming that we don't talk about enough, which is this idea that the oceans act as a reservoir for heat that buffer. Those of us on the surface from the greatest dramatic changes in temperature, but the ocean is not an infinite buffer it keeps absorbing that heat over time and it to warms over time. And that has dramatic implications on ecosystems and ecosystem productivity. And what this is showing is under the best scenarios that is RCP 2.6 of the IPCC that's sort of the most optimistic scenario, if you will. The average change in fish production over time under the scenario. And what you can see here is that even in the rosiest of pictures, fish productivity in the middle latitudes, and I'm sorry tropical latitudes will decrease by as much as 10% over the next 50 years. So if we were to actually look at some of the more scary scenarios including the one that we're currently on, which sort of the moderate track of emissions, that number of decreased productivity approaches 50%. For coastal states in the tropical region, as you might imagine, that's a dramatic drop off and seriously threatens lives and livelihoods. But of course it's not just local issues under the situations. There's a global commodity and it feeds the world in many respects. This is a graph of increasing global population, we're heading towards something like 11 billion people by the middle of the century. It's the end of the century. And it's also showing here average per capita fish consumption and what's fascinating about this to me is that the rate of increase in per capita seafood consumption is increasing faster than global population. And it's more fish because there are more people, more people are eating fish. So that of course translates to an increase in demand, which is this is data from the FAO and what you can see is steady increase in demand for seafood from all sources over time. Now, if you dive a little deeper what you see is that of that demand for seafood, an increasing percentage is coming from aquaculture that is farm raised fish. Well as well as farm raised it's not coming from the sea because in fact a lot of those farm raised fish are dependent on seafood that gets turned into fish meal or other kinds of feed stock. But if you look closer here if you look at that blue color there I'll go to the next slide. The center line is what the FAO is telling us is the total wild caught catch over time. And if you look it's really leveled off since the 90s and in fact in recent years has begun to decrease. There's something else this graph tells us here what I'm showing you in the middle line is the FAO estimates of reconstructed catch something about like 85 million metric tons or so for the past decade. But that's not the actual catch. And if we that's sorry that's the reported catch there. What we, if we look at actual market data, what we find is that the actual catch is something like 30 to 35% greater than the reported catch that's three constructed catch there. And at the estimates if you look at the air bars could be considerably even higher than that by by huge margins. So what's making up that difference. I efficient. And, and I efficient here, we mentioned it already is being illegal unreported unregulated fishing so what, what is that what is illegal what is unreported what is unregulated what do we mean by that. So illegal is quite frankly it means that it is violating established laws regulations see multilateral agreements through regional fishery management organizations. It is by definition illegal according to international law. But there are two other use there that are a little more make the whole issue a little more complicated. And, and we sort of often conflate just illegal fishing with IU but that's not the case. IU is unreported, and that's from vessels that might otherwise be fishing legally but which are not reporting the catch that they, that they have either they're hiding the catch and some some form of fashion. They're under reporting it. This is an incredibly common practice and probably the greatest source of that gap between reported and actual worldwide catch. The other source, or the other you I should say and I use unregulated fishing. And this is a really pernicious one that we really don't often talk about we talk about illegal because it's something that we can sort of very tangible when somebody is is fishing in another country's exclusive economic zone without rights of access. We talk about unreported because we can talk about things like a state actor that may be some reporting their catch to international fishery organization. So fishing is fishing that happens in parts of the world ocean that are unregulated that have no managing governance by high seas, or a part of the high seas that might otherwise have a regional fishery management organization, but where those measures that that are from oh have are weak. So you put these together you get IU. As mentioned in that in that first chart of total catch you could potentially make up as much as one third of the global seafood trade. So this is not just a minor issue this is not some minor concern this is essentially a major part of the global market of seafood. That's 26 million tons of fish. It's about $23 billion. And that's just off the dock in value of fish if you look at the total market value that number skyrockets up to $50 billion a year. It presents all sorts of different kinds of risk. I like to break the kinds of risk down into broad categories of acute and strategic. When I talk about acute risk I'm talking about issues like you might see in the South China Sea. We've seen over the last several years China using maritime militia fishing vessels to blockade. We've seen other navies within the South China Sea to prevent access from islands such as Subaru for the Spratlys. You have instances of Indonesia blowing up fishing vessels that have been encroaching in its waters that Argentina recently did the same to a Chinese fishing vessel. These are actual sources of potential conflict in Southeast Africa you have situations where piracy and IU are tightly intertwined. As Mike mentioned at the top human rights issues are often intertwined with IU risk. We'll get more into that in a minute I know Karen's going to talk about that later so I won't belabor the point but essentially these are intertwined issues human rights abuses at sea and IU go hand in hand. And then obviously economic and food security challenges. If you are developing coastal state and a foreign power is taking most of your fish that prevents huge challenges to you on both those fronts. But there are the strategic issues here, either from the perspective of a great power like the US or from the developing state for developing state, I like to think this in terms of sovereignty sustainability and security. If you can't maintain sovereignty or your own coastal resources it's very hard for you to manage them sustainably. And if you can't manage your own coastal resources sustainably then you're ultimately facing a deep security risk. For the United States, if we are not supporting our partners in achieving those three s's, we are not being an effective partner, and they may look elsewhere for support. So, thinking about this there are different ways that IU can manifest. Obviously we talked about illegal unreported and unregulated but you can either have that occurring at sort of the local regional scales from artisanal or local fishing fleets on the left there is a picture of the fish fleet and these blue boats that are famous for engaging in IU fishing across Southeast Asia and into the western Pacific. These are vessels that are manned by fishing crews that go relatively far at sea for how small the vessels are, and can have locally a very large impact but we don't think of them as being a major threat to global food security. So fishing fleets on the other hand are often state sponsored either in actual fact, or through large subsidies. And these are fleets that will travel the world to either produce seafood for the home market or for export. One of the ways that disordered fleets operate or operate effectively because it's a very expensive proposition is through the use of trans shipping vessels where fish is caught at sea by a fisher vessel and then trans shipped at sea onto a large river vessel. This allows the actual fishing vessels to stay at sea for up to three years at a time, which of course leads into potential for human rights abuses and other other issues. This process also allows the co-mingling of illegal and legally caught fish makes it very hard to see to track seafood through the supply chain, and is generally one of the biggest challenges when trying to deal with IU fishing. So if we look at where this is happening, these are IU or trans shipping hotspots and in red are what we might call suspected IU events. And you can see the wide distribution of these fleets, as well as wide distribution of trans shipping events across the globe. Just briefly on human rights abuses. The reason we talked about this as being so intertwined is in large part because of this trans shipping mechanism. Labor is the biggest cost of fishing far and away. And one of the best ways to cut down your labor force or labor costs of course is to engage in labor abuses. So I'll leave it there and just see that I know Karen's house is going to talk about this a little bit but but again IU and human rights abuses at sea are really intertwined. So back to just water fishing. There are a few nations that have that dominate this, this industry, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the US has a very, very small to smart fishing fleet primarily in the West Pacific for tuna. And we have something like 35 vessels and we rank six on this list. So you can see that that this is a big gap in the level of effort here. Really the top two China and then Taiwan dominate together producing about 60% of the total effort for distant water fleets. So turning to China. What's driving this well their demand for seafood is really exploded over the last 20 years. What's interesting though is unlike the US where our demand has exploded. And we've gone from really a producing nation for for fish to an importing nation for fish imports exports have kept pace for China. And what that means is they've had to develop the distant water fleet. And so as you can see a dramatic explosive growth in their distant water fleet, really in the last 10 years to the point now where it's about 3000 vessels potentially a little more depending on how you count regional fleets and they make up 40% of the total distant water fishing by effort across the globe. This is supported by a network of foreign fishing bases. Like mentioned at the top, the potential base in Djibouti, there are a number of these bases already in place or in development around the globe. Just last year we tracked through a very sort of surface level survey about half a billion dollars worth of investment around the globe. And Chinese distant water fleet and these bases have been officially identified as part of the broader Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. Now, the Belt and Road initiative is, as you may know, China's plan for foreign infrastructure investment, often viewed as a tool for soft power. And we should see these sort of fishing bases as also playing a role in that space. So this is on the right here, an example from Noatebu in Mauritania. And what you can see in the top right of this picture here are the local artisanal fishing vessels. Whereas down here is the Chinese fishing base. And these are, this is mostly dows, small canoes, that sort of thing. And then these up here are 150 foot industrial trawlers. So that's the kind of difference that you can see when China puts in a base. And what this does is not only does it provide a large footprint for fishing effort, but it also enables essentially a closed route into the seafood supply chain. So fish that is caught by China's fleet can offload into these fishing bases and then import directly back into China. So this enables a strong degree of opacity, a lack of transparency in these arrangements. So I'm going to close here just thinking quickly about policy solutions then certainly should move to our other speakers. We should be thinking about how we support management and developing states. That's a key part of this process. And how we can improve market access controls either through for port states, for states that are landing seafood, but also for market states like the US and how we control access to our markets for seafood. Regional enforcement cooperatives are incredibly important. We think about maritime piracy as an analogous challenge, looking to that for solutions. Multilateral versus bilateral ocean governance we want to encourage multilateral governance bilateral governments tends to be opaque. We have multiple instruments that we can use at hand port states kick out remit substance negotiations and increase transparency through expanded use of as another technologies. So I'll close there. Thank you. Thank you very much that was excellent I really appreciate the very thorough overview the slides were super helpful too so thank you very much for taking some time to kind of lay the foundation for us and explain the scope of this really wicked problem, or challenge I guess is the best way to phrase it. Thank you. So I'd like to introduce our two panelists who will be joining with Mavish Mada joined the Department of State's Office of the legal advisor in 2012. She currently serves as an attorney advisor in the office of the assistant legal advisor for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. In her role. She advises on matters relating to the development negotiation and application of international domestic law involving the fisheries aspect of the law of the sea. Regional fisheries management organizations port state measures and illegal unreported and unregulated fishing fishery enforcement and US marine life embargoes as well as migratory birds it's a, it's a big portfolio Mavish. Next by Ms Karen Stouse who serves as senior policy counselor for the US Department of Justice is human trafficking protection unit. Karen works on legislative and executive branch policy proposals affecting the capacity of the unit and of the US Attorney's Office is to prosecute trafficking and supports building capacity among HTP use enforcement partners. In August 2019 Karen has also served on a part time detail to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General Support Department wide and interagency anti trafficking coordination. And with that, Mavish, can you please give us some better insight into some of the relevant international agreements in the context of IUU fishing. Happy to. Good afternoon everyone and thank you Michael for that introduction and to the Stockton Center for hosting us virtually today. I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk about IUU fishing. Michael and what touched on some of the reasons why IUU fishing is important and just to underscore those points. Because it can undermine the science and sustainability of fish fish stocks. It can also lead to the loss both short and long term of economic opportunities, and to negative effects on food security and the environment. Although IUU fishing is not a crime under US law, as what mentioned it intersects with many other activities that are crimes, like money laundering drug trafficking and human trafficking including forced labor. We certainly see those trends in the Indo-Pacific region. Ultimately IUU fishers avoid the operational costs associated with sustainable fisheries management and they put legal producers at a disadvantage. The resulting global losses are nearly impossible to quantify but some estimates place it at billions or tens of billions of dollars each year. So in terms of what the Department of State is doing to develop tools to combat IUU fishing. We work closely with a variety of interagency partners including NOAA Coast Guard and the Department of Justice to level the playing field for US industry by promoting our best practices and advocating for the adoption of measures that match our high domestic standards. So to that end we negotiate the bilateral and multilateral agreements that make up the global legal framework for international fisheries management. So because of this there's a number of different tools that apply from the high seas through EEZs and imports to combat IUU fishing and ensure that the fish and seafood that make it into restaurants and kitchens around the world today is legally caught. So I'll start with the high seas. Contrary to the narrative that the high seas are lawless zones where anything goes, there are rules that apply. Much of the basis for modern fisheries governance today drives from and expands on the framework that's laid out in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. That convention specifically addresses highly migratory species, straddling stocks and anadromous stocks in its provision on cooperation between states with a view to toward the conservation and management of these stocks. Additionally, the United States along with 91 other parties have joined the agreement for the implementation of the provisions of the convention of 10 December 1982 relating to the conservation and management of straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish which is a mouthful, but it's otherwise known as the UN fish stocks agreement. Under that agreement, there are overarching rules that establish the operation of sub regional and regional fisheries management organization or RFMOs, which of what touched on. It has provisions on everything from scientific research to the duties of flag import states to enforcement and dispute resolution. So in terms of RFMOs, the United States has worked over many decades to establish a network of these treaty based multilateral bodies that oversee the cooperative and sustainable management of shared fish stocks and other living marine resources. Some RFMOs have geographic mandates others have species specific mandates and through these organizations member states and jurisdictions coordinate on the scientific study of shared fisheries resources. They establish importantly conservation and management measures to manage them and they undertake cooperative fisheries monitoring and enforcement activities. There are a number of tools that RFMOs have at their disposal to combat IUU fishing. These include IUU vessel lists and high seas boarding and inspection regimes. A good example of an RFMO that has both of these in the Indo Pacific region is the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Management Commission or WCPFC. So RFMOs like WCPFC that have IUU vessel lists will keep track of vessels that have engaged in IUU fishing in the areas that are managed by that RFMO. And then the commission members to which those vessels are flagged are then required to take action, including against the vessel and these measures also include requirements about submitting information on enforcement activities that the member may undertake including any imposition of sanctions against the vessels that are on the list. Under high seas boarding and inspection measures, the members of these commissions may carry out boarding and inspection as you would guess on the high seas of fishing vessels that are engaged in or reported to have engaged in fishing that is subject to the relevant convention and they do these boardings to ensure that the fishing is being conducted in accordance with the conservation and management measures of that organization. So these regimes often have some pretty detailed procedures regarding which vessels may be boarded, notification to the flag state and RFMO of the boarding, guidelines for the inspectors and instructions for the masters of the fishing vessels themselves. In a nutshell, management and enforcement are two of the primary contributions that RFMOs have made to international cooperation on fisheries. In terms of other mechanisms, a bilateral maritime law enforcement or shipwriter agreements were mentioned earlier. These offer states tools for deterrence. These agreements can be used to target anything from drug smuggling, migrants smuggling and illicit transport of weapons as well as IUU fishing. And with respect to IUU fishing, these agreements recognize that management and enforcement in EEZ is the primary responsibility of coastal states, which are the first line of defense against IUU fishing. But these agreements sort of act as a force multiplier that can strengthen their capacity and expand their capability to deter IUU fishing. So for example, the US has agreements with other states and that allows us to provide US vessel and aircraft platforms and our expertise for joint patrol, boarding and inspection operations along with other cooperative activities. So the law enforcement officials called shipwriters from each party can then embark on the vessels of the other party to authorize and insist the local officials during a boarding and inspection of a suspect vessel of that shipwriters nationality on the high seas. And it also can allow them to board any flagged vessels within waters under the jurisdiction of the shipwriter country's nationality. So after the boarding is complete, usually a boarding report is submitted to the coastal state for follow-up action in terms of whether it violates their domestic law. And if the boarding occurs on the high seas, the boarding report is generally sent to both the flag state and to the RFMO. Getting a little bit closer to land within ports increasingly states are also cooperating to ensure that only legitimately captured fish makes it through their ports through systems of inspection. The gold standard for this is the agreement on port state measures to prevent deter and eliminate illegal unreported and unregulated fishing. This entered into force in June 2016. They're currently 66 parties and they include many countries from the Asia Pacific region, including many major seafood producers. The focus of this agreement is on preventing fishing vessels from landing IUU caught fish in ports. And it works to keep those products out of commerce. The parties designate certain ports for fishing vessels and request those vessels then have to request entry. They're also required to provide specific information to the port authorities that allows the port authorities to then conduct inspections of those vessels in deny entry or use of port to vessels where they have proof that IUU fishing has occurred. Additionally, the agreement provides for cooperation in terms of information exchange and on the inspection results. Additionally, through that agreement, we also provide technical and capacity building assistance either directly or through appropriate international bodies to enhance the ability of developing states to implement port state measures. And in addition to the PSMA, many RFMOs either have or are moving toward adopting measures that track with the PSMA. And sometimes those measures will be used by RFMOs in conjunction with IUU vessel lists to identify vessels for inspection. Finally, in terms of the US market, there are a number of ways that there are a number of programs that the United States employs but I'll sort of touch on one of them. These are generally risk based traceability programs and one of them is the seafood monitoring import import program that tracks seafood from harvest entry into commerce. It has record keeping requirements for certain types of fish and fish products. Priority species cover everything from abalone, dolphin fish, mahi mahi, shrimp, king crab, snapper, cod, and the list goes on. So the US does outreach and support for countries who are seeking to export food to the United States under this program, and as well as training, it's one of, it's one part of a full suite of traceability programs that sort of go from seeded table. I will conclude by just saying that the variety of approaches outlined here demonstrate the increasing creativity of the international community in adapting tools to meet the challenges of IUU fishing and sustainable fisheries management. They cover a large geographic as well as methodological scope. And we encourage states to increase participation in and awareness of these efforts because that can only have a positive effect for conservation and management of fish stocks around the world. And I'll end there. Obviously, thank you very much. That was that was excellent. Super technical right like there are so many different moving pieces with this. You've got, you know, domestic law considerations and international legal considerations and multilateral treaties bilateral agreements there's just a lot of a lot of a lot of pieces to keep track of it's a it's definitely one of the reasons that this issue is so so complicated. I wrote a little bit about it at my, my time at Brookings, and I was, I didn't really know too much about it before I kind of dove in and roll my sleeves up and I was just staggered by how much background you really need to get into to speak intelligently about about this issue holistically so thank you very much for that great overview on the, the the international legal frameworks that are in play. And both, all three of us have kind of teased your presentation a little bit I'm really looking forward to hear to hear what you have to say and to get in, get in deep on some of the associated criminal aspects that we see along with with fishing so with that please, please take it away I'd love to hear what you have to say about that. Thank you captain Sinclair and thank you all for joining today. I'm Karen styles, I'm Senior Policy Council with the human trafficking prosecution unit at the US Department of Justice and we are as a headquarters unit that is composed of subject matter experts on human trafficking. We collaborate with the 93 US Attorney's offices around the country to prosecute human trafficking, and we focus on those cases that are complex novel and multi jurisdictional and that involve either forced labor or sex trafficking by force fraud or coercion. So my presentation today is going to be really heavily based on the content of a Department of Justice report that we submitted to Congress just four months ago. Congress had directed us at DOJ to convene an interagency task force that would analyze legal and jurisdictional issues related specifically to human trafficking in fishing and international waters, and to make any recommendations that would address gaps. And I think an important contribution of the report actually is a very lengthy appendix that accompanies the report which is a table detailing a very wide range of relevant authorities agency by agency. And so if you are a lawyer interested in this area hopefully you will enjoy geeking out with this table appendix to the report. The report and appendix are available on the DOJ and State Department websites and I can drop a link into the chat for anyone who's interested. The next steps now that the report has been submitted to Congress with recommendations is that both Congress and the administration and executive branch agencies can consider those recommendations and set priorities among them. I do just want to mention that the interagency partners that made really significant contributions to this report included the US Coast Guard, NOAA, the Department of State and USAID departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Labor, Treasury, and the US trade representatives. So, today I would like to first describe the problem of human trafficking in fishing and international waters. I know that some might not be familiar with it. I will just highlight the US government's existing legal authorities to address human trafficking, and then some of the gaps in those authorities and then hopefully we will have time during the Q&A to share in a little bit more detail some of the key recommendations that our interagency task force made in order to address some of those gaps. So, to start with, human trafficking is one of a range of serious crimes that are committed at sea. For those who are interested in learning more, there is in a more compelling and readable format, maybe those who don't enjoy geeking out on those types of legal statutory tables. I really commend the book Outlaw Oceans by Ian Urbina and his ongoing journalism on this topic, which is called the Outlaw Oceans Project, which you can find online. That covers the broader range of crimes, but my remarks will focus specifically on the crime of human trafficking in fishing, which is the focus of the report that I've mentioned. So, human trafficking in general encompasses both forced labor, sometimes known as labor trafficking, as well as sex trafficking, will be focused on forced labor today. Under U.S. law, what is forced labor? It is securing labor or services through the use of force or coercion and the criminal prohibition is at 18 U.S. Code section 1589. The concept of coercion is extremely important, and it really covers any scheme that would cause a reasonable person in the victim's particular situation to fear that they or someone else would suffer serious harm if the person did not continue to provide the labor. So it's important to notice that human trafficking does not require crossing of international borders. It does not require transportation. It does not even require movement. So human trafficking is not human smuggling. I do also want to note that our report, as the prior speakers have also mentioned, our report does draw the connection between unsustainable fishing practices and human trafficking. And distant water fishing, and in particular unsustainable fishing that occurs on distant water fishing vessels, by definition is occurring farther out to sea. So it's more difficult to investigate, to detect crimes, and because of the added costs of distant water fishing, there is a pressure to reduce costs. Unfortunately, this makes forced labor more attractive to unscripted actors in order to reduce costs. And one of the things that we have seen is that the transshipment of catch at sea or transferring the catch from one type of vessel to a different type of vessel at sea, allowing those distant water fishing vessels to remain at sea rather than interports is one important indicator of potential human trafficking. The working conditions on those vessels that stay at sea for weeks or even months at a time are very likely to be degraded and degraded working conditions is one of the places where you may find human trafficking victims. And I do want to note that US government investigative agencies have not identified human trafficking on US fishing vessels, but our report does recognize that based on conditions in some US fleets, there is a notable risk of human trafficking on US vessels. Here's an example of the experience reported by two Indonesian fishers who brought a civil lawsuit against a US vessel employer in 2016. So this was not a criminal case, but a civil lawsuit. And the description of their experiences is in many ways typical of what we see globally in human trafficking fishing cases and this case is known as Soraihan versus the sea queen to. These two Indonesian fishers had entered into what they believed was a legitimate contract to work as tuna fishermen aboard an American vessel. They entered that contract when they were still at home. And several characteristics of this case are very common to forced labor in distant water fishing in other fleets globally and also to forced labor cases generally that we've seen in the United States and globally. In other words, outside of the fishing sector as well. Very high recruitment fees leading to debt. These are worker paid recruitment fees costs that workers are paying in order to access jobs. Now this debt becomes very important. The recruitment of workers from impoverished countries or impoverished areas within countries is very common and the threat of debt acts very powerfully. There are little to no other options to earn the amount of money necessary to pay off those debts in most cases. So, for those of us who have, you know, Western brains we often think in terms of physical violence and physically violent crimes being the most serious but in many parts of the world where hunger or homelessness are constantly just possibilities around the corner the threat of financial ruin acts far more powerfully than than certain types of physical violence. So these two fishermen were deceived about the work and there was a sort of a bait and switch with respect to the nature of the job. They had signed one contract with certain promising certain payment and certain conditions, and then later on after they had left home after they had traveled away from home after they were no longer able to just bail on the situation. The agent asked them to sign a different contract and this contract had a $1,000 US $1,000 penalty if they failed to complete their two year contract term. So in other words, no matter how bad the conditions might get, they would owe the equivalent of about two and a half months wages, if they decided to leave the work early. These two workers also faced hazardous and unsafe working conditions and a lack of access to medical care when they were injured. Also, isolation is a feature of all of these distant water fishing cases it's a feature in many forced labor cases but especially in these cases, where the workers are not even allowed to leave their vessel when they enter the vessel because they don't have the appropriate visa, and that's what these workers, these two workers were facing. And last but not least, their passports were confiscated so very often we see documents being withheld as a means of preventing workers from escaping situations if they do happen to be in a port where they could actually leave the vessel. So in this case, the parties reached a settlement in 2018 for an undisclosed amount. But under the settlement agreement, the vessel operator agreed to adopt and implement a code of conduct to protect future workers, and also to distribute a know your rights flyer to all of the workers that are employed in the future on this vessel. So, now I want to talk about what, what are the United States government legal authorities, what can the US government do to address human trafficking in fishing and international waters, and what already can be done and what actions would require legislative or executive branch policy decisions. And those are the questions that we tried to answer with our report. There we go. The way we organized our report was recognized that the answers to these questions are very different depending on whether we are talking about US vessels or foreign vessels. And so the report, which addresses authorities gaps and then recommendations is structured in such a way to review these questions separately with respect to US vessels first, then foreign vessels whose catch actually enters the United States, where we have fewer options but still some very important and significant options to address the problem of human trafficking. And then last the report looks at what we can do related to foreign vessels whose catch never actually enters the United States. So, first on United States vessels, we can criminally prosecute forced labor on US vessels, we can prosecute the captain if they're involved in the forced labor and we also have the potential to prosecute downstream actors in the supply chain for those vessels. When fish is caught outside the United States, even on a US vessel, it is for customs purposes still considered an import and so it can be subject to the US legal prohibition against importation of goods produced in whole or in part with forced labor. That importation prohibition is at 19 US code 1307. It's enforced by customs and border protection. And so Noah's office of law enforcement can board US vessels and also requires some US vessels to carry observers. US Coast Guard also can board US vessels when in the United States or international waters to enforce the United States laws. And it's also important to note that we do have victim assistance mechanisms. And that's whether the victims ultimately at the time that they're needing assistance are located in the United States or overseas perhaps back in their home countries. And so we do have some of these authorities, but the there are a number of gaps even in addressing US vessels. And really, I think the most significant gap that I would want to highlight today is actually our ability simply to detect the presence of forced labor, even on US vessels. So, I mentioned before, we so far have not actually detected forced labor on US vessels, even though we know that there are significant risks on US vessels. There are debt issues that I described earlier that are quite common in some fleets. Also, there is a structural situation where foreign workers on US fishing vessels that are in the high seas that are not, you know, in the internal waters of the US. Those vessels, unlike other US employers do not need to secure United States worker visas in order to employ workers on the US vessels. Which means as I alluded earlier that even when those US vessels come into US ports, the workers on those vessels are not allowed to leave the port areas except in certain specific situations if they get some type of humanitarian leave and that of course depends on the captain. Well, if you have an unscrupulous captain, they're not going to give them that type of leave. And that's what happened to the two fishers in the case that I mentioned where one of them was injured and still was not allowed to leave the vessel to seek medical care. So, we also have fewer clear avenues to detect so in addition to just the physical isolation that goes along with distant water fishing. There are certain laws that generally protect workers in the US that are not extended to US vessels. So fishing workers on US vessels that are working in international waters do not have wage and hour protections, they're within a complete area of exception to the Fair Labor Standards Act. There are some occupational safety and health provisions that apply to those workers but they are very minimally applied, and they're split across two agencies which has sort of led to a situation where unfortunately they just very often are not being applied. And so the detection of forced labor on these vessels is dependent on reports which would come either from the workers, very unlikely, as we've been speaking about the conditions that the workers are in, or some other witness or a US government official who sees something suspicious or any other person who might be encountering these workers and again, you know, given the, given the nature of the industry we're talking about these types of reports or, you know, tips about criminal violations, and especially forced labor are highly unlikely. So returning to vessels whose catch enters, so foreign vessels whose catch enters the United States. The United States does potentially have criminal jurisdiction over forced labor on those vessels. We do have extraterritorial jurisdiction over human trafficking crimes, but it is dependent on the connection of the potential defendant to the United States. We also have what I mentioned earlier, the customs prohibition on importation of goods produced in whole or in part with forced labor, meaning whether it's, you know, the whole fish that was produced with forced labor that's being imported. Not prohibited, but also even if, you know, fish is incorporated into some other product, that product cannot be imported into the United States if the fish within that product was caught using forced labor. So as far as some of the key gaps in this area, there are similar of course issues to detection, even fewer opportunities for US government officials to potentially detect forced labor and US enforcement agencies, such as Coast Guard only can detect when there is some form of consent by the vessel, or by the foreign government that flag the vessel. But as the prior speakers were describing, most of the relevant boarding agreements between the United States and foreign governments relate to suspected fisheries violations. They do not cover human trafficking crimes. There is one RFMO that has a nine non binding agreement to address forced labor issues but it's, it hasn't extended to this type of mutual agreement to potentially detect and enforce against human trafficking or forced labor crimes on the vessels. Last but not least, the foreign vessels whose cash does not enter the United States. In those cases we have even fewer options for US government action, but we're, we're not all together helpless there either. We have diplomatic options and foreign assistance strategies, some of which were also described by other speakers in terms of negotiation of RFMOs or other kinds of bilateral agreements that could potentially incorporate addressing forced labor. So, I will stop there for now but I do want to, to note that our report included 27 high level recommendations. Some of those recommendations were to Congress and they would require legislative change. Those, all those recommendations were agreed by consensus among the agencies participating in the task force. And hopefully we'll have time to go into more detail on some of them during the Q&A. I will drop a link to the report in the chat like I mentioned. But it's also, I want to note that some of our high level recommendations were actually, in a sense, recommendations to ourselves we were identifying actions that the executive branch could take, even in the absence of legislative action by Congress in order to strengthen our ability to address forced labor and fishing in international waters. Thank you. Thank you Karen. That was an excellent overview of the tools that the United States has available and the challenges of dealing with forced labor and to some extent trafficking associated with IUU fishing. I appreciate the excellent overview and discussion there. So we have just under 10 minutes for questions and answers. I'm going to kind of, I'm going to tee those up and I would ask the respondents to please be brief in their responses. And I first would like to start with a question. It's kind of a technical question for Witt. And it's from Andy Serdy. He notes that the Chinese Distant Water Fishing Fleet operates in 50 states, EEZs. And he asks if there are any active bilateral access treaties under Article 62 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and whether those agreements are based on the calculation of surpluses that the coastal states themselves lack the capacity to catch. So can you talk a little bit just briefly on access agreements and how those help shape the IUU issue over. Yes, great. Thank you. And thanks for that very insightful question. Yes. In fact, that is entirely the basis for many of those agreements. And so that's why we think of IUU as being this really fuzzy term. Because in one sense, fishing under those access agreements would not fit IUU. In fact, it is unclassed requires signature nations to provide that kind of access to access the undeveloped resource, if you will. The problem with those kinds of agreements in particular when you have a nation like China engaging that kind of bilateral access agreement that often tend to be incredibly opaque and very unequal in their application. And so you have agreements that quite often, particularly in the case of West Africa, for example, do not represent accurately the value of the resource that is being taken out of the waters. Oftentimes there is a tremendous amount of corruption that goes on with those agreements. You have a situation in a place like Ghana where you do have some access agreed to, but none of the vessels actually fishing within Ghanaian waters are supposed to be Chinese owned or foreign owned, I should say. But in actual fact, if you track beneficial ownership, something like 90% of the fleet can be traced back to China. The issue with those kinds of agreements really does come down to their opacity, and then I'll add on to the fact that even if you look at sort of the black and white ink, it may not be IUU on paper. But in actual fact, you often have lots of unreported fishing that goes along with those kinds of access agreements in addition to the other inequities that are formed. So I'll just say last thing on that is that those kinds of agreements also tend to be a pathway for other kinds of influence peddling, especially from a state actor like China. Great. Thank you. That was an excellent response. I'm going to throw this question out to the entire panel and I'd be curious to hear from all three. In my preliminary remarks, I talked about the general prohibition against criminalizing IUU fishing that's captured in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. I'm curious as to your thoughts as to the pros and cons of greater potential to criminalize certain aspects of IUU fishing, to make it easier to prosecute perhaps for grievous offenses or only vessel masters. And Karen as the justice rep, why don't you start with your thoughts on that? Actually, my expertise is really on the human trafficking crimes. So I'm not sure that I could speak generally to the pros and cons of criminalizing some of the other crimes related to fisheries. And I would defer maybe to Madish who might know if the US government has a settled opinion on that question. Thanks, Karen. Yeah, I think for the most part, the US government is not in favor of criminalizing IUU fishing. I think we all recognize that it's very important to address the criminal activity associated with IUU fishing and some see criminalizing IUU fishing itself as a way to get at that. We think that would be counterproductive for a number of different reasons. One of them, I think one of the most more important ones is it sort of takes away from the role that RFMOs play, they are not law enforcement agencies. And it takes away from their expertise in fisheries management and puts IUU fishing in more of a law enforcement space that kind of doesn't have as clear of a focus on the long term sustainability of fisheries, which is really the goal. I think it also tends to sort of blur the distinction between the I, the illegal part of IUU fishing and the you and the you unregulated fishing for instance is not may not be illegal at all, because it's unregulated. So you kind of lose sight of those other elements and those are important as well. And what are what are your thoughts you would, in our previous discussions in prep for this you talked about, you know whether interdiction alone will meet the challenge of deterrence. Can you can you expound on the idea on the pros and cons of increased enforcement and or interdiction. Absolutely. So, interdiction and enforcement at sea is you need to have the traffic cops so to speak you need to have the demonstrable deterrence out there but we're never going to solve this challenge particularly given it's multifaceted and complex nature, the potential for that to be a really completely effective mode of dealing this challenge. On the other hand, market access is likely to be probably our best tool in the kit, if you will, the EU, the US and Japan together are far and away the dominant factors in the seafood marketplace. The EU already has a very strong market access control scheme in place. Japan has just announced that they are putting one in place we have one that's kind of fall somewhere between. It was already mentioned by Mavish the seafood import monitoring program is what I would call maybe in its teenage years. It's coming into form. There are still gaps and how it's applied there are still holes and how it's being enforced, but it's a great start. There are a number of things that we can do to step it up and start building on the progress we've made there. One of the things I would say that can be built upon is improving how we define I across US law it's actually defined rather unevenly. We have in a number of statutes IU definition that comports with the international FAO definition which is fairly broad and encompasses violation of international agreements including labor agreements. The IU definition that we actually enforce against under the seafood import monitoring program is much more constrained than those definitions. So I think one of the things that we could do first off would be to think about how we might expand that definition to be consistent and compatible with international definitions to get to the question about illegality. I think that maybe contra a little bit to what Mavish is saying. Once we begin to sort of think about getting that enhanced definition in place that does open up a number of other options for thinking about how illegal imports into the US might be dealt with. RFMOS are excellent and supporting those kind of international management mechanisms is incredibly important, but unfortunately RFMOS are often weak and compliance mechanisms for RFMOS also tend to be weak. So, the way you back that up is through market access and if we have strong market access controls here in the US and if we have strong legal deterrence for importers to bring in illegally or IU associated product into the US that can only help RFMO compliance. Excellent. With Karen Mavish, thank you so much for the excellent presentation today. I can't tell you how helpful it was for me to continue to wrap my mind around this really dynamic really challenging issue. It was great to hear from you all today. Unfortunately, this is all that we have time for on this panel. I believe the conclusion of the event will be kicking off here in about seven minutes with a presentation by the Coast Guard Judge Advocate General Admiral Burke. And with that, Mike, I'd like to turn the floor back over to you. Thanks. Cap say, Claire Sinclair. Thank you so much. Dr. Son Weber. Thank you, Karen Mavish. Thanks for donating your time. I know you both have demanding schedules and we greatly appreciate you sharing your expertise. To the audience, it is minute 59. And I'm going to shift our break just a tad to the right. Meaning we will start at minute 10 so 1510 Eastern Daylight Savings time we will reconvene for closing remarks from Admiral Burke. See you then. Welcome back from our break. We are about to begin the 12th and final session of our three day conference and looking back over the days discussions. I know a common theme. Whether it was the SJAs talking about US military operations in the Indo Pacific, whether it was Dr. Nassu talking about maritime militias or Professor Lalonde discussing the Northwest Passage. All of these discussions share the rule of law as a common theme. Now as a Coast Guard judge advocate with 30 years of military service in the United States. I happen to know I personally know that the rule of law and rule based order is of particular importance to the United States Coast Guard and even Coast Guards around the world. That's why it's fitting that our closing remarks will be provided by rare Admiral Melissa Burt, the judge advocate general and chief counsel of the United States Coast Guard. You can read more about Radimal Burt's extensive career in the biographical information in the online program. Welcome, and I turn the floor over to you, man. Thank you. I feel really honored to be part of this important conference. And I really would like to offer my thanks and appreciation to Professor Kraska share the Stockton Center, we're Admiral Chatfield, President of the War College, and and also for my Coast Guard brethren who have been really supporting all of this. And it's clearly this is so important to all of us that this leadership of the Stockton Center continuing this dialogue about international maritime governance. It's so necessary, more now than I would say ever. It's been a scary time for for this country and for this world. In the past few years just seems to be growing and growing in in threats. When we talk about the world. And we all have different perspectives of what the, what the world looks like from the Coast Guard's world we, we were thinking about like the bearing straights because of the fishing to McMurdo because we do. The breaking out the ice to allow scientists to get their work done the Galapagos and that's another fishing issue and as well as drugs Madagascar. The geography of the Indo Pacific region cuts across obviously many cultures continents and and really the artificial boundaries of the combatant commands and that was very apparent when I was at Northern command, because you can see how commands are supposed to handle issues that are impacting their AOR, but their AORs really don't have anything to do with what the issues are. So, it's a really, this is a very dynamic time. And, of course, there's only one thing that brings us all together or can bring us all together and that's the rule of law. I think that's something that Colonel McCann already talked a lot about, but I wanted to mention that it's very, it's really special to be doing this here. Well, for you all there. At the war college because the, as I understand it was 1901 when you first came together to discuss these issues. And that effort resulted in the very first volume of the Naval War Colleges Law Journal, the International Law Studies. And it's worthy that at the very beginning of that the preface talked about the value of bring to bear mutual discussion, thought and experience of those who make the application of the law and the trained mind of the International Jurist. So here it is 120 years later and that tradition of engaging in a peaceful discourse and mutual discussion and finding solutions to the maritime challenges that continues today and what an honor to be part of that tradition. The other thing that you know we talk about a lot and all of us in our in our environments are talking about diversity of perspectives and sometimes that's that's seen as like an artificial introduction to people and the reality is that is exactly what we, we need and we benefit from and it exists in all of our debates whether we've noticed it or not. In the last three days, we've had armed forces, jurists, we've had government, government professionals, attorneys, and, and other scholars, we've also benefited from the perspectives of 10 different countries legal minds from 10 different countries. And that is diversity of perspective, and it is so important to us moving forward. We've also had the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace have participated and the UN International Law Commission, and of course, academia. So, there's the conference participants, you are what makes this such a useful conference because you span geography gender cultures and worldviews, and you're bringing a discussion that is so much more valuable to our understanding and also how we can move forward. The, the only, the only answer to the stability and security, the instability and the security challenges we're facing now is the rule of law, there's nothing else that can can unify us or, or, or get us on the same page and yet it's really, it's really been under attack. And, and, you know, I was really thrilled to see that the, the president's President Biden, he by the way spoke at the Coast Guard Academy for graduation today so it was very exciting for us to have the president there. But he, he issued national security strategy guidance which is only interim but it makes it very clear that, that international governance is critical, and that what we built after World War two has to adapt, and America is ideally positioned to the conversations that we need to have around the world. And I'm not I don't need to read all of it but he does say I like I like this comment mid rapid change and mounting crises the systems flaws and inequities are becoming apparent gridlock and interstate rivalry have caused many around the world, including Americans to question the relevance of global, global engagement which is just very sad so the United States cannot return to business as usual the past order cannot just be restored. So, as allies and partners we can modernize the architecture of international cooperation for the challenges of this century. And that's, and he says from cyber threats to climate change corruption and digital authoritarianism. I will tell you from my seat as Coast Guard Chief Counsel I work very closely with DHS. And I will tell you the priorities and the meetings we are having are all about climate change, digital authoritarianism, cyber threats. This is just as you can imagine from the news. These are very, very real issues that are the focus of this administration. Now, and that I think is sending a signal around the world that our priorities are international issues not just American issues. So, our, we talked about our governance system, it was really, you think about it it was really to avoid these world wars and or recurrence of genocides. And then we were sort of adapting to the technologies in the first half of the 20th century but that's, that's just not some of it is applicable, but unfortunately, we have, we have so many more threats today that we never dreamed about climate global health crises. Now we did have obviously the Spanish flu in the first half of the century, but it didn't wasn't treated I mean that today we couldn't have the kind of loss of life and and function as they did in that in the early 1900s. We have perpetual wars and just overwhelming migration flows there, there is the migration flows are increasing every, every year. It's not there's there are so many people who are unsettled on this earth, and there's no end in sight. We have artificial intelligence challenges. And of course we have space endeavors, peaceful but potentially otherwise. So, just as our military legal scholars work to shape international law in the past, those with understanding of state power and training in the law, we can work to shape international governance systems of the future. We have to have cross domain joint operations to ensure success. And this is not just the theater commands like of a World War two, or goldwater nickel saying yes we have to work together. We have to think about national power and bringing bring lethality or bring peace to bear by whole of government. It's been very challenging in the past but we're not going to be successful unless we're bringing across an integrated diplomatic military information spectrum. So in the United States, as you know we we have done this try service maritime strategy which talks about joint operations across the spectrum, but this is not. This is just one aspect. We have so many peacetime missions and we have so many missions that are related to disaster that it's it's interesting to me how much the Navy has really been a disaster responder. Probably not envisioned in World War two, but much of the Navy's work now because of the tsunamis the nuclear facility explosions all these things that are just new surprising. They, they should, they could be called black swans but they've happened so much now I don't know if they're, they're black swans anymore, but it's, it's interesting how everything is bled over and we all have a role in safeguarding. Both are, you know, our countries but just the human life around the world and global commerce. There's just such a tenuous tie for some of these when something bad happened I think coven. That's, that's just such a shiny example of, of how, how little. Nothing can happen, and it doesn't seem like it should impact so much but it just took down the world economy and, and is still. We're still reeling from it well over a year later and will be for several years. So, as we talk about these issues, whether it's, you know, putting the Coast Guard with the Navy for illegal drug or illegal fishing or it's the Coast Guard embarking on, or excuse me, when the Coast Guard hosts shipwriters from Micronesia and other countries, whether it's south com and embarking maritime aircraft and international straight, or, you know, this is interesting to me. When other countries are asking for our cyber mission forces to help them, and that is happening. We're talking about, you know, space, space force and space com operations. You know, we, we're in a situation now in the Coast Guard where we're, we have a private company basically asking for support because it's a US mission that is being launched from from the waters outside of our territorial seas. We've presented some issues obviously internationally because if we're going to do enforcement in our easy as though we're territorial seas that sends a definite signal so that's been a, that's been just yet another challenge. We have so many challenges in this area of how the rule of law no longer applies in the same way, but we have to figure out how it should apply. And as we talked about the, the tri-service maritime strategy, obviously that's a huge effort to institutionalize this idea that we have to have rule of law, and the Coast Guard support to maritime governance and the ability to operate in the spectrum of, the entire spectrum of operations is highlighted in the strategy. So it's very, it was really great to see in writing that integrated naval forces are uniquely suited to, for operations across the competition continuum. And I'm not going to go into how awesome the Coast Guard is, but, but you all know because you've had a lot of Coast Guard speakers here and interacted with us. So the future, as it was in the past, partnerships and collaboration across national boundaries, international boundaries are critical to advance our national and shared interests. And the most modern security, stability and prosperity is a testament to, you know, why this works. And it's even, even with COVID, the fact that we have vaccines flowing around the world to help other countries is, it's, it's so important. And other countries are clearly doing the same, because, you know, when you have a pandemic, it doesn't really discriminate in the way that, you know, people think it should. So it's, it's important for the vaccines not to discriminate based on wealth and other things. So at any rate, multilateral cooperation is something we've always benefited from, even going back to our help from the French in the American Revolution to post World War Two, a license to Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. And our strength comes not just about force, but it comes from this collaboration and integration on issues that are important to all of our partners when we join together and work together on something that is, is, it helps all of us. I was just going to change a command and one of the things that the hallmark guiding principle that the commander said was, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats and I think that's obviously said, probably too often, but, but if we don't have that attitude, we're going to move forward. So I, I do feel that way we have to think about benefiting all and how we're going to do that, as opposed to just a zero sum game with every action we take. So, as Secretary Blinken stated when he laid out a foreign policy for the American people, American leadership and engagement matter, whether we like it or not, the world does not organize itself. When we pull back one of two things was likely to happen, either another country takes our place, but not in a way that advances our values or interests, and maybe just as bad no one steps up, and then we have chaos, and that creates danger. So, I think that's, that's really telling it great to see our leaders spouts that. And this is also interesting not a single global challenge that affects your lives can be met by any one nation acting alone, not even one as powerful as the United States so that's definitely a departure from where we, where we were. But it's very inspiring that we're going that direction so as we talk about that in the Indo Pacific. We have obviously vast stretches of ocean that us can't control all of that. We have to have some incentive and some ability to ensure these, these smaller nations can thrive. And it's, it's just they don't have many of these places do not have the ability to to patrol and to stop the kinds of encroachment and the kinds of damage that is, is being done to their, their nations. So, we're very fortunate that we've had the opportunity to enter into bilateral and multilateral agreements. The Coast Guard is particularly good at this because we've obviously worked with the State Department and Department of Justice and all of our partners but these agreements. They are not seen as threatening or taking a country sovereignty. They're seen as the United States helping them to, to be more powerful in their own right so they see it as an enhancement to their sovereignty. And that's, that's really a great feeling because certainly we don't want to appear that we're just someone else taking over their, their territorial seas and that kind of thing but we, we've been very fortunate we've had great agreements and we continue to expand those agreements to address different things. But obviously they were originally more on the law enforcement side for narcotics trafficking and search and rescue as well. Oil spill response migrants smuggling weapons of mass destruction smuggling. But now we're really expanding to deal with the, the, the illicit fishing so the fishing. Because that is what is impacting the stability of our Pacific countries and also, we're not talking about this here but I met with the African, some African leadership this week and obviously that's the China concerns are the same there so it's interesting that the things that we think of are just our issue. It's, it's not every these are global issues. I want to highlight a more recent agreement that we just signed during coven, which was exciting, but the American Institute in Taiwan, and the Taipei economic and cultural representative office in the United States which is tech rose the acronym which you would never remember. We signed an MOU, which establishes the Coast Guard working group and the point of this is to basically talk about our common objectives, and we do have common objectives, preserving maritime resources reducing the fishing, participating in joint search and rescue, and collaborating in maritime environmental response incidents. And I just, I find it remarkable that, you know, across the world, you can always find common goals common ground common interests, and, and a desire to work together international exchange cooperation, and even enforcement. These are things that we can do together, which sometimes we look at all of our differences but there are things we can do together despite differences. We have over 50 bilateral agreements and, and prior to recent years, we even had, we had shipwriters from from China, which is hard to believe and Russia. We've got a lot of joint operations up until now. Now we're, our joint operations are more with our friends, but we do continue to keep the dialogue opened with, with any country who wants to discuss the types of law enforcement or maritime issues that are outside of arguing with the law to see, which is what sometimes happens. At any rate, I, I want to mention something that happened last year which was fascinating. In December of last year, the archipelagic country of Palau detected a vessel that was illegally fishing off of Helen Reath, and their government dispatched a patrol boat, which was the PSS President, and Remelik, the second to interdict the fishing vessel, but they asked the Coast Guard under an existing bilateral agreement for assistance, and we were actually flew out. We dispatched a C-130 aircraft, which flew really slowly but it got there, and a new fast response cutter, and we helped them board this fishing vessel and they, they were able to to contain the vessel and seize the catch, and deter this thing from happening again. Australia has supported this cooperative effort with Guardian class patrol boats, the PSS President, Hi Remelik, the second and the US Coast Guard crews that assisted in the boarding operations provided technical expertise on the fisheries enforcement so this is illustrative how, how nations, how, how different skills and authorities can be brought together in a collaborative approach, enhancing the law of the sea, and, and ensuring that Palau could assert its sovereignty and protect its natural resources. And this partnership with Palau is not just a law enforcement partnership. We also had just two weeks ago, our, our patrol boat out there, the fast response cutter Myrtle Hazard. They delivered emergency supplies, food and water to Palau after the typhoon devastated that country. And it's so amazing to think about how we're all over the world, even though we're the US Coast Guard, but I think that's the future for all of us. I think guarding a white picket fence at home is, is not the future. So, looking forward, we have to continue, if we want to be successful and have a world that we want to live in. We have to use partnerships, we have to collaborate, and we have to ensure that all nations have access to the global commons, and that includes freedom navigation and over, overflight rights under international law. And insightful conversations from the last few days have certainly advanced that cause. And I would encourage all in attendance scholars and leaders alike that if you can bring this back to where you are and continue to work to refine how we can enhance our maritime system, both in peace and for war, we will all benefit so I think that this conference's impact will go on much, much beyond today, through your efforts to bring back what you have thought about and contemplated the last few days. So, Professor Kraska, I return the floor to you. I think I'm going to do that but I'm not sure exactly how I do it. But I'm going to bring in a younger person because, let's see, here we go. Oh, here, probably somebody told me. I've got it, Admiral, I don't know if you can hear me okay ma'am, but I will take mine. All right. Thank you. Thank you ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. You're, I know you have a very demanding schedule, and we are grateful for Professor Kraska all of the war college is thankful ma'am, for you donating your time your remarks are a perfect exclamation point on the conversations that we had over the last three days. I'd also from Professor Kraska the Stockton Center in the war college I want to thank all of the panelists moderators and keynote speakers who donated their time and expertise for the audience and I hope the audience found it insightful because we gathered together and then lastly I'd like to offer thanks on behalf of the Stockton Center to the Naval War College Foundation and Mrs Nancy Cushing. If not for them events like this would not be possible. I encourage all of you in the audience to follow us on Twitter at Stockton Center. Look on our web page on the Stockton Center web page where you can learn more about other events like this conference, particularly we're excited about a 30 June event, where we will talk about the US seizure of the North Korean cargo vessel, wise honest, and in the in December, we're going to have our annual law of armed conflict conference and we're excited that that will actually be in person in new point. Again, you can find out more about those events on the Stockton Center web page. So thank you for your time. Thank you to the panelists moderators and speakers and to the audience. We wish you all the best. Goodbye.