Place-Based Protections in an Era of Climate Change
New Horizons in Environmental and Energy Law series
In June 2010, I had the extreme good fortune to be able to spend a week on Midway Atoll in the United States’ Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument as part of a ten-day program, Papahānaumokuākea ’Ahahui Alaka’i, run by Monument personnel. Given its World War II history and other significant human interventions, neither Midway nor the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a whole can be considered pristine environments. Indeed, one of my favorite photographs from the trip is of a Hawaiian monk seal (Figure 0.1)—a species of marine mammal considered to be critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—sleeping in a sunny spot of beach, surrounded by rusting hunks of metal dumped by the United States military at the northwestern end of Sand Island, the largest of the three islands that make up Midway Atoll. The spot is nicknamed “Rusty Bucket,” and for good reason. Among other things, it explains why we participants in the program were advised to get a tetanus booster before we left home. Nevertheless, Midway Atoll and the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument more generally support a rich diversity of marine life and seabirds, well justifying the Monument’s elevation in July 2010 to the status of a World Heritage Site. The coral reefs in the Monument are free from fishing pressures (fishing is now prohibited in the Monument) and— Rusty Bucket notwithstanding—relatively free from significant marine pollution. Not coincidentally, apex marine predators (sharks of various...