31 Elisabeth Mann Borgese: Ecology, Relationality, and Law of the Sea

Elisabeth Mann Borgese is recognized today for her contributions to oceans advocacy and governance, and often referred to as the ‘Mother of the Oceans’.¹ She advocated for the inclusion of the principle of common heritage of mankind (CHM) in the deep seabed mining regime under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).² Mann Borgese viewed this principle as vital to the global world order, and ocean governance as an opportunity to test its application.³ She was also the author of over a dozen books, and editor of diverse texts from short stories to children’s literature to academic writings .⁴ Philosopher, aestheticist, and friend Peter Serracino Inglott describes her work as ranging ‘from musicology to surrealist fiction to experiments with animal communication to an odd manifesto of idiosyncratic feminism to the economics of self-management in productive organisations’.⁵ These eclectic contributions partly reflect her unique life experience as the daughter of Thomas Mann, Nobel Prize for literature laureate, and Katia Pringsheim, the granddaughter of Hedwig Dohm who has been described as ‘one of the greatest exponents of feminism in the nineteenth century’.⁶ Yet, even Mann Borgese’s early writings reveal an underlying ecological worldview that is expressed in her work as a ‘philosophy of continuity between the individual, society, and nature’.⁷ Julia Poertner suggests that Mann Borgese’s mission was to change the dominant Western narrative of uncooperative individualism that underlies contemporary capitalism and related societal subsystems, including gender norms. She sought to replace it with a narrative of humans as caring, co-operative, and a part of nature.⁸ In 2002, Mann Borgese was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the International Ocean Institute (IOI), which she founded.⁹ The IOI has been described as her ‘most enduring and endearing legacy’.¹⁰

The life and legacy of Elisabeth Mann Borgese have become of increasing interest to me since I was invited to research this portrait. First, like Mann Borgese, I am a professor (of law) at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where she was a professor (of political science, and, for a shorter period, adjunct professor of law) between 1980 and 2002. I did not have the opportunity to meet her, although several of my colleagues at Dalhousie’s Marine & Environmental Law Institute worked closely with her. They continue her legacy through support for IOI and publication of the Ocean Yearbook, described by Shastri as IOI’s flagship publication, and ‘another EMB brainchild’.¹¹ Her approach and vision to overcome narratives of Western individualism intrigue me because it coincides with some of my own work. I advocate for the necessity to reimagine humans (including workers and investors) and states as ecologically embedded relational beings, even as each is differentially situated.¹² Moreover, as a legal scholar who started her career as a professional musician, I was curious to learn that Mann Borgese observed that her only academic training was in music.¹³ In her writings on cultural perspectives on the ocean, notably in The Oceanic Circle, she offers musical analysis while also observing how the sea and music influenced her father’s writings.¹⁴

In this portrait, I first describe Mann Borgese’s life and contribution to international law, drawing primarily on her own words. I then turn to the views of others to shed light on her legacy. In the third part, I reflect on how her other contributions reveal a common theme of ecological relational thinking that influenced her contributions to the development of international law, including oceans governance. I conclude with reflections on why her legacy, beyond the usual focus on CHM, law of the sea, and the establishment of the IOI, might merit closer attention in our time of global ecological crisis.

Elisabeth Mann Borgese was born in 1918 in Germany, and escaped with her family to France, then Switzerland, and finally the United States when Hitler came to power.¹⁵ She read Sicilian Guiseppe Antonio Borgese’s writings on fascist totalitarianism when she was eighteen years old, met him in Princeton in 1938, and married him in 1939 when he was fifty-seven and she twenty-one.¹⁶ In her 1999 Nexus lecture, she describes Borgese as ‘not only my husband and the father of my children but also my teacher, whose influence on the development of my thinking matched that of my parents’.¹⁷

Between 1945 and 1952, the Borgeses and others founded the multidisciplinary Chicago Committee to Frame a World Constitution along with its journal Common Cause.¹⁸ The initiative was encouraged by Robert M Hutchinson, then President of the University of Chicago.¹⁹ As much work on the development of the nuclear bomb was done at the University, ‘profound feeling of guilt gripped Chicago as the mushroom clouds rose over Hiroshima and Nagasaki’.²⁰ Borgese believed that this placed a moral responsibility upon the university to unite the world.²¹ According to Mann Borgese, the Chicago Committee was distinct from other world government movements at the time as its focus went beyond the usual goals of preventing international violence and the maintenance of peace.²² Instead, the Committee approached ‘government or governance in an interdisciplinary and holistic mode’ that viewed peace as ‘more than the absence of war’, and that peace could only be attained through social and economic justice, nationally and internationally.²³

The drafters maintained that transcending existing economic systems and particularly the Roman law concept of ownership was essential for economic justice.²⁴ A new system was needed, which ‘declares that the four elements of life—earth, water, air, and energy—are the common property of the human race’.²⁵ While aware that the immediate adoption of the Constitution by the international community was unrealistic, the intention was to provide a ‘blueprint pointing in the direction of a desirable, or probably, ineluctable future’.²⁶

The work of the Chicago Committee came to a halt during McCarthysim as ‘[a]nyone who dared to speak out for peace, was branded as a Communist, condemned to silence and fired from his job’.²⁷ Hutchinson and many exiles, including Mann Borgese’s family, returned to Europe.²⁸ However, Borgese died suddenly in 1952 in Italy leaving Mann Borgese with two children. She stayed in Italy for fourteen years.²⁹

In 1964, Mann Borgese was invited by Hutchins to become a fellow with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions to resume work on the world constitution and she relocated to California.³⁰ In November 1967, Arvid Pardo, the Maltese Ambassador to the United Nations delivered an ‘epoch-making ocean address to the United Nations’ in which he proposed the CHM principle to transcend ‘both sovereignty and freedom’ of the high seas and address mounting perils such as pollution, armed conflict, and the extinction of marine living resources.³¹ Believing that the Cold War made progress on the world constitution unlikely, Mann Borgese proposed to Hutchins that the ocean could serve as ‘our great laboratory for the making of a new world order’.³² Joining forces with Pardo, she organized a three-year project leading to the 1970 Pacem in Maribus conference (‘Peace on the Oceans’).³³ Over thirty Pacem in Maribus international conferences were held between 1970 and 2013 as a forum for the consideration of the challenges of ocean space ‘in their interconnectedness’.³⁴ Mann Borgese established the International Ocean Institute (IOI) in 1972 to ‘enhance a broad interdisciplinary dialogue on ocean law and development’ with its headquarters in Malta.³⁵

The IOI was actively involved in the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, which culminated in the adoption of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982.³⁶ The President of IOI’s Governing Board, who was also the President of UNCLOS III, described UNCLOS as ‘A Constitution for the Oceans’.³⁷ According to Mann Borgese, all major actors participated in the Pacem in Maribus conferences and the UNCLOS III process.³⁸ Mann Borgese herself contributed in many ways, including through her association with Pardo, on behalf of IOI, and later as a member of the Austrian delegation.

The previous part draws heavily on a biographical lecture given by Mann Borgese in 1999 in which she reflects on her life and engagement with oceans governance. But what might others who have assessed her contributions to the development of the law of the sea have to say about her influence? To what extent was her ability to participate and influence enabled by her family history?

Tirza Meyer has taken an historical and biographical approach to Mann Borgese’s role prior to, during, and after UNCLOS.³⁹ According to Meyer, Mann Borgese developed her ideal of internationalism through her work with the Chicago Committee, and was able to apply it to UNCLOS through the CHM principle by utilizing her experiences in Chicago and Santa Barbara to stage her own conferences and design the IOI. Mann Borgese’s privileged background led to her meeting Borgese, and her relationship with him enabled her participation in the world constitutionalism project where she contributed as a research assistant to the Committee and as editor of Common Concern, ultimately writing twelve articles closely related to the Committee’s work.⁴⁰ According to Mann Borgese, while Borgese was the key author of the constitution, she ‘very actively assisted’.⁴¹ Following Borgese’s death, Mann Borgese undertook a wide range of activities while based in Italy, from editing, writing, and teaching to travel ‘to India to interview Nehru and conduct behavioural experiments on elephants’.⁴² During the time, she kept in touch with Hutchins and others from the Chicago circle.⁴³

Mann Borgese describes Pardo as having an influence ‘on my thinking and on my life [that] is commensurate only to that of my parents and my husband’.⁴⁴ Yet, while she clearly attributes the CHM principle to him, Pardo’s was not the first introduction of the concept of CHM to the deep seabed context.⁴⁵ While Pardo and Mann Borgese viewed the CHM principle as able to reinforce developing countries’ goals in the New International Economic Order (NIEO),⁴⁶ Mann Borgese’s vision of CHM was broader. She saw the ocean regime as akin to world governance, while Pardo limited his vision to the area outside national jurisdiction.⁴⁷ Yet both Mann Borgese and Pardo identified multiple ways in which UNCLOS and the NIEO could be mutually reinforcing beyond CHM, including through the establishment of exclusive economic zones, South-South cooperation and regional organization, capacity building at multiple levels, protection of the interests of land-locked states, and the establishment of regional centres for co-operation, development, and transfer of technology.⁴⁸ Mann Borgese was able to bring concrete proposals forward for the negotiations and gained influence by affiliating herself with high profile people like Pardo and key delegations including the Group of Landlocked and Geographically Disadvantaged States, the Evensen Group, and the Austrian Delegation.⁴⁹ While some were unwilling to work with her, such as the Neptune Group,⁵⁰ Mann Borgese was able to adapt to changing situations, and was not an ‘ivory tower idealist’ as suggested by some.⁵¹

Despite Mann Borgese’s extensive efforts to promote an international oceans organization equivalent to the World Bank, this idea never gained traction.⁵² Her written statement on behalf of IOI to UNCLOS III advocating for ‘an ocean space authority’ was met with a complaint from the Russian delegation and was ‘ruled out of order’.⁵³ As a member of the Austrian delegation, she actively developed earlier work on joint venture models of the exploitation of the deep seabed that could successfully bring together entities from differing economic systems.⁵⁴ Yet while her work leading to UNCLOS III may ultimately have had little lasting influence given the 1994 Agreement on implementation of Part XI,⁵⁵ her primary influence may have been ‘to bring together people interested in shaping the new regime for the oceans’.⁵⁶ Without Mann Borgese having ‘devoted her career to the cause of the oceans’ neither IOI nor Pacem in Maribus would exist, and many of those who gathered for the UNCLOS III negotiations in 1974 would have had access to less information and less understanding of the issues and their significance.⁵⁷ Mann Borgese noted the importance of IOI supporting smaller nations in Africa and Asia at UNCLOS III and included a collection of their statements in IOI’s earliest publications.⁵⁸ Her colleagues at Dalhousie considered her ‘genuine connection to colleagues in the “Third World” ’ as one of her most substantial contributions, including the launch of IOI training programmes for ocean professionals from the developing world,⁵⁹ which continue to this day.

Mann Borgese’s commitment to developing countries is also evident in her involvement with the founding of the Independent World Commission for the Oceans (IWCO), modelled on the Brundtland Commission.⁶⁰ Though Mann Borgese’s purpose was to promote the CHM narrative, it officially sought to draw attention to sustainable development in marine areas and to prepare a report with recommendations for the international community in celebration of the 1998 United Nations Oceans Year.⁶¹ On receiving the draft volume of background papers for the report, Mann Borgese complained that there were not enough papers from developing countries.⁶² In her letter of resignation of 1998, she ‘accused the Commission of discriminating against developing countries and representatives of the South’.⁶³

Mann Borgese’s contributions to the development of the law of the sea have received much attention. This part illuminates how her diverse writings and related activities reveal a common theme of ecological relational thought according to which everything is interconnected.⁶⁴ How does this vision reflect Mann Borgese’s understanding of the legacy of UNCLOS?

Both Borgese’s political writings and his realistic-mythic writings inspired Mann Borgese. In Borgese’s short story ‘The Sea’, a bureaucratic employee dreams he is a fish caught in a fisher’s net which is his firm—Mann Borgese was deeply impressed by Borgese’s ability to identify with the fish and his depiction of its escape back into the ocean.⁶⁵ Her fascination with non-human animals is also evident in her own writing including a collection of short stories written after her husband died.⁶⁶ The first story concerns an ape being induced by humans to conduct an orchestra made up of human players.⁶⁷ In reality, Mann Borgese taught her dog to type on a specially designed typewriter, and to play the piano with his nose on a piano with enlarged keys.⁶⁸ Her book, The White Snake, contributes to the understanding of animal learning and communication.⁶⁹

Influenced by her feminist grandmother Hedwig Dohm, Mann Borgese wrote about the challenges facing women.⁷⁰ The epilogue of her 1963 book The Ascent of Woman,⁷¹ entitled ‘My Own Utopia’, was inspired by transformations in some snails and fish. In it, babies are born without a sex, then all become women in their early twenties, and transform into men in their mid-forties.⁷² Meyer describes Ascent of Woman as not feminist; arguing it illustrates the rise of Mann Borgese to male acceptance in a male dominated family and society.⁷³ However, Poertner suggests that throughout Ascent of Women, Mann Borgese is ‘testing the hypothesis that there is an affinity between the feminine and the collective, on the one hand, and the masculine and the individualistic on the other, by looking at the social organization in the animal world, the behaviour of crowds, and grammatically gendered language’.⁷⁴ While competitive natural selection has led to individuation and physically stronger men, cultural evolution has led to higher socialization in humans. Equality for women will only be possible through the integration of the individual and the social.⁷⁵ Mann Borgese believed that ‘the history of the development of the individual’ led to both the collapse of the unity of nature and culture, and ‘the inferiority of women’: ‘[i]n pre-individualistic times, “the essence of this unity, of this collective, was women… and man was marginal” ’.⁷⁶

Mann Borgese also wrote many books about the oceans, including the 1970s best seller The Drama of the Oceans,⁷⁷ which expresses ideas of interconnection and ecological grounding.⁷⁸ For example, she describes the ocean system as indivisible where ‘[e]verything in the oceans interacts with everything else, and the oceans themselves interact with the atmosphere and the land’.⁷⁹ To then divide ocean and land, or man and nature, makes no sense, as these concepts are in ‘dynamic continuum, each part of the other’.⁸⁰

This ecological relational worldview is reflected in how Mann Borgese describes the legacy of UNCLOS III. Beyond the CHM principle, Mann Borgese noted that UNCLOS introduced a valuable relational concept: that the problems of the ocean space must be considered as one, where change in one part affects the system as a whole.⁸¹ Moreover, she suggests that UNCLOS ‘limits, transforms, and transcends the concept of ‘sovereignty’ in an interdependent world’.⁸² Without UNCLOS, subsequent international environmental law initiatives such as the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 would not have taken place, or would have been ineffective, due to a lack of framework. Specifically:

The Convention has created what still today [1999] is the only existing comprehensive, binding international environmental law, covering all kinds of pollution from all sources, whether oceanic, land-based or atmospheric, and on a global basis: a framework which can and must be filled by more specific geographically or functionally limited agreements and conventions, of which there are already several hundreds …⁸³

Beyond this, UNCLOS includes extensive provisions on marine scientific research, cooperative technology development, and ‘the most comprehensive, binding yet flexible system for the peaceful settlement of disputes ever accepted by the international community’.⁸⁴

Mann Borgese saw the relationality of UNCLOS and the CHM principle as fundamentally important not only for oceans, but also as for sustainable development.⁸⁵ For Mann Borgese, the term sustainable development is ‘the new name, the new form of “humanistic socialism” or “social humanism” that we need for the next century’.⁸⁶ Development that is not sustainable cannot be development.

Ultimately,

Mann Borgese’s utopia transcends the boundaries that for centuries have characterized modern conceptualizations of human identity, including the foundational assumptions of humanism and social and global orders. It finds its most profound formulation in her understanding and advancement of the common heritage of mankind. Without denying the value and agency of human beings, Mann Borgese’s continuous[ly] dismantle[s] strict boundaries and dualisms between human and nonhuman forms of life, the artificial and the natural, the past, present and the future.⁸⁷

This portrait has touched upon the surface of the many inspiring contributions and insights that emerge from the work of Elisabeth Mann Borgese. Another theme to explore is her commitment to interdisciplinarity, which emerges from her cultural ecology, and is evident in practice in the structure, workings, and contributions of the IOI as an example.⁸⁸ Yet another is Mann Borgese’s proposal for ‘a web of interconnected world communities’ that would serve as the ‘organizational pattern of the global order’, overlapping with nation states, with the international regime of the ocean serving as one community, while others include universities (learning society, managing science and technology as CHM), energy, land-based resources, and communications.⁸⁹ This vision of transnational law beyond sovereignty and property clearly merits further attention.

Mann Borgese’s work appears highly relevant to the current global ecological challenges. At the very least, her thinking on CHM including its application to marine living resources is of importance to the ongoing BBNJ negotiations (the Intergovernmental Conference on an international legally binding instrument under UNCLOS on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction).⁹⁰ But it would appear there is much more on offer that might inform ‘our’ need to reimagine systems across scales, perhaps including the nature of the humans who design them.