Murky Waters: Ambiguous International Law for Ocean Fertilization and Other Geoengineering
Bibliographic record
Abstract
AbstractIn July 2012, the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC) dumped about 100 tons of iron sulfate into the Pacific Ocean some 200 nautical miles (nm) west of Haida Gwaii in British Columbia, Canada. While nominally for restoring depleted salmon stocks, HSRC's ocean fertilization also served as a geoengineering experiment. This Article first looks at ocean fertilization in the context of global catastrophic risk (GCR) - both as a method to mitigate potentially catastrophic climate change and as a major risk itself with unknown environmental effects. The Article then analyzes the HSRC's ocean-fertilization activities under the 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (London Convention) and its 1996 Protocol (London Protocol), which regulate dumping at sea, concluding that Canada was probably (but not certainly) required to enact and enforce laws to restrict ocean fertilization. Whether Canada met this burden requires more facts than are publicly available, although Canada's monitoring of geoengineering and enforcement of relevant laws was clearly suboptimal. The Article then discusses some of the GCR themes relating to the HSRC's ocean fertilization, such as the importance of monitoring and reporting the activities of rogue actors and lessons learned for governing other types of geoengineering, such as aerosol injection. Finally, in light of the ambiguities of the London Convention and London Protocol as they apply to ocean fertilization and other marine threats with unknown effects (such as chemical dispersants), and, considering the need to regulate geoengineering more broadly, this Article makes recommendations on how the international community can continue to develop geoengineering governance.SummaryIntroduction 509I. Geoengineering 512A. Carbon Dioxide Removal 513B. Solar Radiation Management 514C. Ocean Fertilization 515II. Geoengineering and Global Catastrophic Risk 517A. How Does Ocean Fertilization Impact Other GCRs? 518B. Is Ocean Fertilization Itself a GCR? 526III. Unilateral Geoengineering Case Study 528A. Background 528B. London Convention and the London Protocol 530C. Other International Laws that Apply to Ocean Fertilization 531D. Ocean Fertilization Under the LC-LP 5341. Iron Sulfate is Waste or Other Matter 5342. Iron Sulfate is Not Exempted Per the Annex 1 Reverse List 5343. HSRC's Activities May Constitute Dumping 535a. Ordinary Meaning of Disposal 535b. Ordinary Meaning of Placement Activity 536c. Object and Purpose of LP 537d. Opinions of Parties 537e. 2008 LC-LP Resolution 538f. Placement Activity that is Contrary to the Aims of the LP 539g. Legitimate Scientific Research Exception 541E. Canada's Duty to Enforce the LP . …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.020 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.012 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".