Who Pays When a Reef Is Damaged?
When a ship runs aground on a coral reef, the damage is real even though no one owns the reef. The law needs a way to put a price on it.
Dr. Peter Edwards3 min read
Coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass beds provide services we rarely pay for: fish, coastal protection, beach sand and tourism. When a ship grounds on a reef or spills oil, hotels, fishers and the public all lose. But who pays, and how much?
A gap in the law
In 2012 I served as an expert witness for the Government of Jamaica in a ship-grounding case. What struck me was that, without laws specifically addressing damage to natural resources, the court had to look to trade and commercial law for guidance. There was no clear basis for claiming compensation for a public resource like a reef.
Learning from our neighbours
Other countries have shown the way. In the United States, laws such as the Oil Pollution Act allow governments to recover the cost of restoring damaged natural resources; they shaped the claims after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. Closer to home, when a freighter ran aground on Belize's Barrier Reef in 2009, Belize drew on earlier coral reef valuation studies to support its claim. The court awarded BZ$2,000 per square metre for about 5,755 square metres of damaged reef, more than BZ$11.5 million. Valuation studies done years earlier became real compensation.
What a damage law would do
Natural resource damage legislation would let the state recover the cost of restoring reefs, mangroves and other public resources, and put those funds into restoration and conservation. It would show that Jamaica takes its obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea seriously, and it would deter careless operators as shipping traffic grows. The same principle could apply on land, to toxic discharges and industrial pollution. None of it works without good valuation science, which is why studies of what our ecosystems are worth are not academic exercises. They are the evidence that makes polluters pay.
Adapted from “Proposed Logistics Hub Requires Updated Maritime Laws” (2013). The description of Jamaica's legal framework reflects the situation when the original was written.