The Fifth Wave of Maritime Security: An Interview with Dr Timothy Edmunds

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rofessor Timothy Edmunds has previously undertaken the role as an advisor to government departments such as the Ministry of Transport and Royal Navy and continues his career as a professor in International Security and the Head of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) at the University of Bristol.

Professor Edmunds continues to explore the new trends of maritime security. Following his book, Understanding Maritime Security, he has mentioned that there would be a fifth wave in maritime security.

Currently in the process of writing the second edition, he gives an insight into which trends “will determine what the priorities are going to be over the next 10 or 20 years” in an exclusive interview.

Geopolitics

Maritime security is increasingly shifting from strengthening law enforcement capabilities and coordination to militarized competition and interaction of policing in a geopolitical way. Professor Edmunds states that this was a “huge shift” from when he started writing about maritime security “10 years ago”.

He highlights how the development of maritime bases and deployment in regions such as Gulf, has the potential to both increase policing within the region by building maritime capabilities “for counter piracy operations, but also to assert their geopolitical presence in East Africa” and the Western  Indian Ocean.

As exemplified with China’s “base in Djibouti” and states such as France, the U.S, UAE and Saudia Arabia establishing or in the process of establishing naval bases and outposts in the region.

Edmunds mentions that this is particularly apparent in the way that states are contesting chokepoints and chokepoints becoming increasingly politicized in ways which were not before. The militarization of maritime security which is leading to an increase in naval concerns rather than a policing concern. Navies ultimately became the “front foremost in maritime security issues”. Maritime security is no longer a conversation of piracy as much as it was before, but about the wider geopolitical interactions.

UNCLOS

Although the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has become a debated topic regarding its relevance of 21st century issues and calls to be revisited, Professor Edmunds mentioned that it in most “circumstances is the foundation of ocean governance” and believes it is still “one of the most impressive international treaties we have”.

UNCLOS has become a widely adopted legislation among ocean governance. However, UNCLOS has shown to have gaps since the topics of importance of the 21st century were not on the political agenda in the year when it was negotiated. Including some transnational organized crimes at sea, the protection of subsea maritime infrastructure, and the impact and implications of climate change.

“Following the finalization of UNLCLOS, the maritime order was seen as largely settled, and that has changed.”

Not only because it took 30 years to negotiate, but Professor Edmunds also mentioned how difficult any changes and negotiations are likely to be possible to revise UNCLOS given new geopolitical trends and interests. Iran blocking the Strait of Hormoz and charging ship passages became a direct “attack on one of the fundamental principles of UNCLOS” in relation to the freedom of passage.

While soft challenges from states like China, following recent island building in the South China Sea, contest “some of the underlying assumptions of UNCLOS or reinterpreting in unconventional or norm breaking ways”. These examples show how easy it can be for states to use “legal challenges or loopholes” in a “coercive manner to pursue strategic goals on the sea”.

Very few states have challenged the fundamentals” of UNCLOS stated Professor Edmunds, but that there will “always be areas of contestation, such as how you calculate the countries maritime boundaries”.

Climate change and the Blue Acceleration

The Blue acceleration is a term coined by Swedish researcher to describe the rapid expansion of human use of the sea in recent decades. In the last 30 – 35 years, Professor Edmunds stated that this enormous acceleration in ship containers, fishing, infrastructure, cruise ships and wind farming has become a “cause and consequence of globalization”.

With nearly 80-90 per cent of goods traded by the sea, this acceleration has also led to an increase in the size of transportation. Bigger ships to transport good, oils gas and other commodities. As well as larger and more capable fishing vessels. This “economic acceleration of activity caused by the blue acceleration has brought economic benefits to countries” stated Dr Edmunds and has been “critical” to elevating “poverty in the global South” and elsewhere.

However, Professor Edmunds mentioned that “the more the sea is being used, the potential of more environmental consequences that comes with it. The more fishing in coastal regions which leads to fewer fishes in the region, exacerbating the marine biodiversity crisis.”

The “number of vessels on sea increases greenhouse gases, as individual entities the container ships being hugely polluting by burning dirty fuel oil”.

Now with the development of technology, Professor Edmunds highlights new talks regarding technologies developed to exploit deep sea minerals.

“Deep sea mineral exploitation” has the potential to “create worrying and unknown environmental consequences” and the development of technologies that allow for new exploitations at the sea “creates new kinds of environmental risks”.

This economic benefit of the blue acceleration is felt in “very real ways in all parts of the world”. But Professor Edmunds also stated the environmental consequences of those developments which are unknown.

Climate change and increased fishing impacts fish stocks, fish migration patterns, where fish are moving to different areas and thus potentially creating geopolitical tensions between states.

“Climate change is one of the animating meta themes of maritime security going forward and how it develops. Partly because of the impact it will have on maritime activity around fishing, but also the knock-on effects it will have on coastal communities. If fish stock dries up, there is evidence that when areas are overfished, fishers will look towards alternatives which may be criminal alternatives. Smuggling or piracy being some of these alternatives sought out.”

As well as the drives of piracy being poverty and exclusion in coastal areas particularly amongst former fishing communities, sea level rise threatens port infrastructures, such as “military port infrastructures” mentioned Professor Edmunds.

“Climate change presents an existential threat to states” stated Edmunds, while referencing Tuvalu, which has become the first digital nation following the threats posed by the sea level rise.