Statutory International Law ♦ Online 65 Va. J. Int’l L. Online 2 (2025)

The International Law of Geoengineering: Case Study in Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement

AARON BAUM

The International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea recently held that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea includes an obligation on state parties to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but it did not specify how they can or should do so. While ocean geoengineering may be necessary for meeting global climate goals, the international law governing ocean-based methods for “geoengineering” is underdeveloped. This Essay uses the case study of ocean alkalinity enhancement to demonstrate the shortfalls of existing international law in both managing ocean geoengineering and facilitating its research. There is scant international law that purports to govern ocean geoengineering at all. Confronting that relative vacuum, parties to the 1972 London Convention and 1996 London Protocol, which govern ocean dumping, have attempted to use those platforms to regulate geoengineering. But even those efforts have been largely reactive, following unilateral attempts to implement geoengineering, rather than proactive, and they leave vulnerabilities for future unilateral actors to take advantage of the regime’s weakness. This Essay builds on the existing analysis of the law of ocean geoengineering by assessing how the legal framework interacts with present-day demands for climate action. The Essay also takes a stance on what more is needed in the regime beyond the existing law, and pinpoints where the existing regime fails.