National Ocean Policy 5 Years Later

In July of 2010, the Obama Administration ordered the creation of a National Ocean Council to oversee the implementation of his National Ocean Policy (NOP) to connect the decision making processes of state and federal agencies in a collaborative and streamlined process, while creating an opportunity for citizen, private industry, and eNGO advisory input.

Clean Ocean Action has tried to ensure that NOP offered a true participatory process for the communities whose livelihoods depend upon a clean ocean and bear the brunt of the many uses of our ocean and coastal area. Since the inception of NOP, COA has remained outspoken in support of the citizens who live in these areas, and for the health and wellbeing of the ocean itself.

So what has been accomplished on the 5 year anniversary of the NOP? Our blog has a more in depth analysis, however, the short answer is this: even as cooperation and collaboration between agencies has improved, and the body of science and research for which to make decisions has grown, the participatory process we advocated for so stridently is deficient to say the least. The actions of the Obama Administration speak louder than any policy could. The waters of the mid-Atlantic have been opened to oil and gas exploration, the Arctic has been opened to oil drilling, and offshore LNG terminals threaten our coastlines. There is a continued push for development in the most fragile and vulnerable portions of our coastal areas, and the ocean ecosystem we take for granted is showing multiple signs of collapse. COA will continue to engage the policymakers and bureaucracy it encounters throughout the NOP process, and advocate loudly on behalf of the oceans’ health, first and foremost.

Obama Releases Draft National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan

Today, President Obama released his Draft Implementation Plan for advancing a National Ocean Policy in U.S. ocean and coastal waters and the Great Lakes.  The 92-page document outlines 50 actions to collaborate, coordinate and consolidate agency actions to improve the ocean.

Find out more about the Plan HERE.  Contact Clean Ocean Action Citizen Action Coordinator Zach McCue HERE for more information and to find out how you can help.

On the Plan, this Statement from Clean Ocean Action was recently released to the media:

“On the positive side, the Draft Plan clearly lists actions to be taken, identifies the agencies responsible for those actions, and suggests timelines within which those actions should occur.  This level of detail allows the public to hold the Administration responsible for carrying out these plans and coming through on its promises.” 

“The Draft Plan, however, does not answer the questions ‘Will I be able to safely swim at my beach in 5 years?’ or ‘Will there be new oil rigs or industrial complexes built off my beach in the future?’ These are the real questions citizens want answered.”

“The Draft Plan, with its ambitious targets and lofty goals, underscores the need for citizens to get involved in every step of the National Ocean Policy implementation – without independent, local, and robust oversight, this plan could result in a series of reports collecting dust on a bookshelf in D.C.”

“Clean Ocean Action has participated in every step of the development of this Implementation Plan to ensure that it follows through on its commitment to citizen and community involvement,” said Executive Director Cindy Zipf.  “COA is confident that with robust citizen action, this plan can help end ocean pollution and ensure resilient coastal ecosystems.  This plan invites federal agencies to tackle issues that have long plagued the NY/NJ coastlines (like marine debris and plastic pollution) and to back up their initiatives with environmental and education programs.”

Ensuring the health and resiliency of our ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes is crucial to the health of our nation’s economy. Our oceans and coasts support tens of millions of jobs and are a vital part of the U.S. economy.

• Shore-adjacent counties are home to 108.3 million people, 48.6 million jobs, and contributed $5.7 trillion to the U.S. economy. With only 18% of U.S. land area, these counties accounted for 36% of population and 42% of the national economic output in 2007 [i]
• In 2008, recreational fishing supported 384,000 jobs and had a support base of 12.4 million anglers, spending $4.9 billion annually, and the commercial seafood industry supported 1.5 million jobs and generated $104 billion in sales impacts [ii]

“The citizens, businesses, and communities along the NY/NJ coasts have been working for decades to ensure that all ocean uses support one another - producing initiatives like the NY/NJ Clean Ocean Zone plan and state-based coast-wide economic forums,” noted Sean Dixon, Coastal Policy Attorney for Clean Ocean Action.  “We look forward to bringing these initiatives, and the citizen who worked on them, to the National Ocean Council – we’ve done the work, now we need our plans implemented.”

Sources:
[i] National Ocean Economics Program. (2009). State of the Ocean and Coastal Economies, p.6, http://www.oceaneconomics.org/NationalReport/.

[ii] National Marine Fisheries Service. (2010). Fisheries Economics of the United States, 2008. U.S. Dept. Commerce, NOAA Tech. Memo. NMFS-F/SPO-109, p.7, http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st5/publications/index.html.

National Ocean Council’s “Ocean Policy Listening Sessions”

Attention Clean Ocean Action Wavemakers!

The new National Ocean Policy, declared by President Obama in his Executive Order on the Stewardship of the Ocean, our Coasts, and the Great Lakes, created the new National Ocean Council (NOC).  The NOC, and the ocean policy experts from many federal agencies, will be holding a “listening session” in New Jersey to hear from people throughout the Mid-Atlantic Region on how the federal government should be managing the oceans.

This Mid-Atlantic Ocean Listening Session is a great chance to learn about what the National Ocean Policy means for our ocean, what the NOC plans on doing to advance this Policy, and how you can stay involved.   The event will be held at Monmouth University, in Long Branch, NJ, from 10am – 5pm.  More details on an agenda will be available soon.

The Listening Session will focus on 9 Strategic Action Plans developed for each of these areas of ocean policy:

1.       Ecosystem-Based Management – (managing the oceans holistically)

2.       Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning – (integrating all ocean uses to minimize conflicts)

3.       Inform Decisions and Improve Understanding – (improving the state of our ocean sciences)

4.       Coordinate and Support – (improving collaboration between federal, state, local, tribal groups)

5.       Resiliency and Adaptation to Climate Change and Ocean Acidification 

6.       Regional Ecosystem Protection and Restoration – (make conservation of habitats a priority)

7.       Water Quality and Sustainable Practices on Land – (takes Ocean Policy onto land)

8.       Changing Conditions in the Arctic

9.       Ocean, Coastal, and Great Lakes Observations, Mapping, and Infrastructure – (coordinate and expand the many different ocean information gathering sources)

The National Ocean Policy Background

According to the White House’s Oceans Portal (www.whitehouse.gov/oceans), the National Ocean Policy (NOP) “aims to improve the coordination of ocean and coastal management efforts at all levels of government, restore the health of these resources, enhance the ocean and coastal economies, and promote sustainable uses and access.”

Unlike many other federal initiatives, the NOP isn’t a new law or regulation – it is, at the most basic level, a plan for increasing coordination and collaboration between programs, offices, and departments that impact the oceans. 

The NOP is, and always was intended to be, a long-term project.  The initial stages of the process (where we are now) involve simply reaching out to the public, talking to the people, cities, counties, and states of the coastal region, and forming regional teams of experts to map out the who, what, and where of the oceans.

The National Ocean Council

The NOC, made up of many of the President’s lead advisors, agency administrators, and some Cabinet Secretaries and Undersecretaries, has a mission to “to provide sustained, high-level, and coordinated attention to ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes issues and to focus on actions to advance the National [Ocean] Policy.”

Importantly for our region, the NOC will “facilitate the regional development and implementation of” plans by empowering a “Mid-Atlantic Regional Ocean Council” (made up of federal, state, tribal, and a few other representatives from Virginia to New York) to analyze the Mid-Atlantic’s ocean economy, ecology, and future and to prepare marine spatial plans that would, ideally, coordinate all ocean and coastal uses (boating, fishing, energy development, etc) in a way that minimizes conflict between users. 

Clean Ocean Action has submitted comments on the proposed Strategic Action Plans, and on the National Ocean Policy itself, and will be at the Mid-Atlantic Listening Session at Monmouth University on June 30th. 

For our Clean Ocean Action “NOP Listening Session” event page on Facebook, click here