Law of the Sea Institute Conference Held at UC Berkeley

Contact: Karen Chin, karenc@law.berkeley.edu.

What: A Law of the Sea Institute Conference on Multilateralism and International Ocean-Resources will be hosted by the Law of the Sea Institute, Earl Warren Legal Institute, and UC Berkeley. The event was organized by Professor Harry N. Scheiber.

This conference will be dedicated to the subject of multilateral agreements in a variety of ocean-resource subject fields and geographical areas. The papers will address how their implementation has shaped global standards, and how well their various designs have served to reduce conflict while managing resources successfully on a sustainable basis.

The conference is organized in part to recognize the 50th anniversary of the International North Pacific Fisheries Convention. This tripartite agreement involved Japan, Canada, and the United States in a pioneering multilateral effort at coordinated scientific management of the Northeast Pacific’s marine fisheries. Its organization of multilateral science in service of management, and the mechanisms of tripartite cooperation that were instituted, served as a model for many later agreements globally. Its importance was even great in the sense that its negotiation and operational experience were crucial in shaping the subsequent course of debates that ended in the UN Law of the Sea talks and finally in the 1982 framework agreement, the UN LOS Convention. We expect to have a formal commemoration of the Convention, either at a reception or at a main session of the conference.

Additional papers will focus on the history of scientific cooperation in the Pacific, the domestic politics of Japan in relation to international fisheries, multilateralism and marine issues in the Southeast Atlantic, fishery relations between Latin American states and the European Union as a multilateral organization, Russian policy and Pacific fisheries, regionalism and the fisheries in relation to environmental challenges in the Pacific, and the historical relationships of Canada, the United States, and Japan as they led to the 1953 North Pacific convention. A major address will be given by Professor Akio Watanabe, emeritus at the University of Tokyo. Representatives of the Japanese and Canadian governments are being invited to participate in the commemoration of the 1953 convention.

The conference will commence with a reception for speakers and panelists in the early evening of Thursday, February 20, and will formally conclude in the late afternoon of Saturday, February 22. There will also be a dinner that evening.

In addition to Professor Watanabe, speakers and panelists will include:

Tsuneo Akaha, Monterey Institute of International Studies
Frida Armas-Pfirter, Austral University, Argentina
Damir Arnaut, US Department of State
John Briscoe, Esq., San Francisco
David D. Caron, UC Berkeley
Christopher Carr, Esq., San Francisco
Elizabeth Elliot-Meisel, Creighton University
Erik Franckx, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Andrew Guzman, UC Berkeley
Marc Hershman, University of Washington
Vladimir Kaczynski, University of Washington
Bradley Karkkainen, Columbia University and UC Berkeley
Seok-Yong Lee, Hanam University, Korea
Richard McLaughlin, University of Mississippi
Kathryn Mengerink, UC Berkeley
Edward Miles, University of Washington
Russell Moll, California Sea Grant College Program
John Noyes, California Western School of Law
Judge Choon-ho Park, UNITLOS
T.J. Pempel, UC Berkeley
Donald Rothwell, University of Sydney
Helen Rozwadowski, Georgia Tech
Juan Sola, University of Buenos Aires
Bernard Einer Skud, former director, INPFC
Sara Tjossem, University of Washington
Tullio Treves, UNITLOS and University of Milan
Yasuko Tsuru, Tokyo Gakugei University
Jon Van Dyke, University of Hawaii
Davor Vidas, Nansen Institute, Norway
Dolores Wesson, California Sea Grant College Program
Warren Wooster, University of Washington
Katrina Wyman, New York University

When: February 21-22, 2003.