By Dr Laura Major and Dr Elaine Webster

This Plain Language Summary is published in advance of the paper discussed. Please check back soon for a link to the full paper.

Take-home message

If human rights law learns to “sea” humanity, that is to see people everywhere as ocean-embedded, it can help bridge the gap between protecting people and protecting the environment, giving us tools to act now while longer-term reforms develop.

Summary

Human life depends on a healthy ocean, yet most of us rarely think about how closely our lives are tied to it, especially if we live far from the coast. At the same time, many legal systems still treat the ocean mainly as a resource to be used or controlled. This limits our ability to protect both ocean life and the people whose wellbeing depends on it.

In our paper, we explore how human rights law can help us reconnect people and the ocean by recognising how deeply linked our lives are to marine environments. While some long-term campaigns aim to give nature its own legal rights, these changes will take time. We focus on what law can do now, using tools that already exist. We start from the view that people become who they are as individuals and groups through relationships with places. The ocean is a powerful example. For many governments, the ocean is thought of as dangerous or empty, somewhere where people’s safety or rights can be overlooked, allowing them to disappear both physically and in how they are recognised as human beings. But many coastal and Indigenous communities describe the ocean as life-giving, a place where people and marine environments shape and support one another.

Human rights law already helps counter harmful narratives by making people at sea more visible. We describe this as an ability to “see” people at sea. We argue that human rights law could also “sea” people on land: that is, recognise that all of us, wherever we live, are connected to the ocean and dependent on its wellbeing. We argue that human rights bodies already have the tools to take this step. Doing so could help widen global understanding of why the ocean matters for everyone, not just for those living near it. We hope these ideas will spark further research and support practical efforts to protect marine environments in ways that are equitable, inclusive, and attentive to the wellbeing of humans and the ocean.