Code blue

'We need to rethink how we govern our oceans,' says Ranganathan. For 10 years, she has been helping frame international laws to monitor this massive and pivotal shared resource. She just won the €1.5 million Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award for her efforts to ensure that such laws represent the voices of as much of the world as possible

- Dipanjan Sinha

The oceans are “a space both real and imagined”, says Surabhi Ranganathan.

We suffer from sea blindness, she adds. Despite the ocean covering seven-tenths of the planet, it remains an overlooked space in the global consciousness.

It is often perceived as remote and lawless, yet it drives climate, trade and communication.

Once in a while, an event such as the six-day 2021 Suez Canal blockage by the container ship Ever Given disrupts global supply chains, and people notice the ocean's critical role. But its role is ever-present and immediate, wherever in the world one may be, says Ranganathan, 42.

How we manage our relationships with it has implications for economic and climate justice. And we haven't been doing a stellar job so far.

"From plastic pollution in the Mariana Trench to the impact of ocean acidification on weather systems... I think of the ocean as almost incredibly crowded. There is no part of it today that is untouched by the human presence. This calls for a profound rethinking of ocean governance," Ranganathan says.

Over 10 years, her research into new international laws has focused on rethinking our governance of our activities in it, by working to frame laws that would potentially regulate deep-sea mining, and promote fairer and more sustainable collaboration in the shared global resource of the deep seas.

Currently a professor of law and deputy director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge, her interdisciplinary approach — which takes into account international law as well as history, political economy, indigenous community efforts, and lessons learnt from the ills of colonialism — has now won her the prestigious Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award, endowed with €1.5 million.

The laws that govern the sea are in flux, she points out. Speculative and exploratory operations in the deep seas have begun.