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Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory
I recently attended the Economist Magazine World Ocean Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, one of many such international gatherings whereby ocean leaders, public and private, move from place to place, often to discuss the same issues with the same colleagues with the same outcomes, albeit advanced incrementally by a collective will. The Economist conference is somewhat different – smaller, thus more accessible, and focused less on science and policy and more on finance and the emerging phenomenon deemed “the blue economy.”
Follow the money they say, and it is an instructive path, particularly when aspirations meet the reality of economics and best intentions are stymied by vested interests, conventional investors, recalcitrant managers, and politicians lobbied this way and that according to who’s got access to their vacillating attention.
But in this instance the encounters were personal and valuable, and the conversation was rich and provocative, and often points made in the presentations became big ideas in my mind.
One such was a discussion of the role of regulations, systematic structures of rules developed over time in the beginning to frame best practice and thereafter expanded to control abuse. Legislated initiatives, for example, are frequently delayed in implementation awaiting the bureaucracy to draw up regulations to impose some sense of order on design, permits, inspections, and rectification of deficits, physical or otherwise, in the execution from intent to outcome. Business complains about regulation, impeding efficiency and profit. Environmentalists rely on regulation to control worst practice and complaint when even the rules in place are not enforced. Overall, regulation is a conflicted, contradictory word, attempting to describe the rationalization of social, political, and economic reaction to innovation and change.
As a result, regulation slows things down, especially as, these days, almost every regulatory decision is followed by litigation that extends time, costs money, and often dilutes or defeats what began as an impetus for good.
But what if regulation was redefined as a system of incentive: that is, as initiative designed with intended outcomes foreseen, and approvals based on acceptance of the rules in advance, incentivized by subsidy, advantageous financing, tax abatement or credit, and other means by which to motivate, even guarantee, success in lieu of controversy, compromise, confrontation, and community disruption? What if regulation became a forward, motivating context in which to advance change, rather than a backward, litigious impedance to progress?
Government exerts all kinds of such incentives: development subsidy and tax advantage for agriculture and real estate for example. And yet, the recipients of such public funds often thereafter dispute and contest controls intended to make the project conform to the values and outcomes the funds were meant to catalyze. Farmers will accept support and credits for insurance, fertilizer, and equipment, for example, but when they are expected to deal with standards to control negative consequence of their application, they dispute the imposition of control.
We see evidence of this all around us: aquaculture projects and offshore wind farms are two examples close to home. There is a recognition of need; the technology responds; proposals are made; finances are secured; applications are prepared; and expectations are high. But then, that recognition is confronted by sudden opposition, often by those who have encouraged and supported the concept until it falls too nearby, too locally disruptive, anywhere but in my back yard. And what happens then? Regulations are invoked, lawsuits, press releases, principled arguments combine to describe why change cannot, should not, be allowed regardless of recognized need. It happens again and again.
We never seem to be able to anticipate, or to compromise, or to find a consensus before the fact; we always seem to find our objections and cleave to the regulations to deny the opportunity, indeed the actuality, of change. In the meantime, every moment lost is withdrawn from our future, every loss diminishes possibility and progress, every diminishment increases the probability of failure. That is the antithesis of the true meaning of regulation: to control a process so that it works well, endures, increases, and builds: to enable, not deny,
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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