world of warships henri iv historical design

But the broader application of the fur-seal solution was forestalled by World War I, and the story of the development of the successful model has been largely forgotten. 1 The dispute was eventually resolved through an innovative multi-lateral treaty, hailed at the time as ‘a splendid bargain’, a ‘conservation measure of the highest importance’ and a ‘first definite step in the elaboration of an international game law’. Overharvesting and competition between sealers triggered an environmental, economic, and political crisis that pushed the species towards extinction and brought the US and the UK to the brink of war. The industry then turned its attention to the northern fur-seals (Callorhinus ursinus), which migrate each spring from as far away as Southern California to rookeries on remote islands in the Behring Sea.

This manuscript traces the origins of the dispute and the steps taken to reach a solution, including the several joint scientific inquiries commissioned by the parties, and invites discussion about how the lessons of the fur-seal crisis could be applied to avoid and resolve future biodiversity-related disputes.īy the mid-nineteenth century, many large herds of fur-seals in the Southern hemisphere had been hunted to near extinction for their luxuriant underfur. The parties found they could not reach agreement on the causes of the decline of fur-seal populations, but they could agree on a regulatory model that incented the reallocation of private capital away from unsustainable activities, and that provided for an equitable sharing of public revenues in the long term, including through compensatory payments in exchange for restraint in the exercise of legal rights. The main obstacles that prevented a more timely and efficient resolution were scientific uncertainty and risk to investment capital. The fur-seal dispute followed this pattern it occurred over a period of more than 25 years during which the parties initiated several resets of the cycle until finally reaching a durable multilateral agreement grounded in a commitment to the rule of law and the rational use of natural resources. The history of the Alaskan fur-seal crisis shows that the development of international environmental law and the peaceful settlement of biodiversity-related disputes can occur over the very long term, through a dynamic, iterative, and cyclical process that involves four key steps: the sorting of competing interests the sifting of evidence and expert opinion convergence on shared values and the articulation of new regulatory regimes that reflect those values.

World of warships henri iv historical design