Toward contested seas? A review of geopolitical trends at sea in the 21st century

Abstract

In the Anthropocene, the world’s oceans have come under unprecedented human pressure. Countries have responded to this pressure by organizing themselves internationally around the idea of sustainable ocean governance. However, the geopolitical context in which sustainable ocean governance has taken shape in recent decades has begun to shift. After two centuries marked by British and American maritime hegemony, several other states are now asserting their maritime presence, raising the question of whether an increasingly multipolar environment will bring the relatively stable international maritime order to an end. In this paper we collect, organize, and analyze evidence from academic literature that reports and investigates a shift in geopolitics at sea. Based on the results of this literature review we explore how the international maritime order is changing and discuss what this geopolitical shift means for sustainable ocean governance.

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