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This chapter analyses the scope and limitations of the principle of national property over natural resources of the subsoil established by Art 27 of the Mexican Constitution. It discusses the difference between state and national property from a comparative perspective. In addition, it describes the evolution of the constitutional and legal framework regarding the role private investment has played in the public monopoly of oil exploration and exploitation. From this analysis, the chapter proposes the adoption of a new approach to make effective the principle of national sovereignty over oil resources without excluding the possibility of private investment participating in oil exploration and exploitation.

This chapter focuses on Nigerian author Ben Okri’s 1987 short story “What the Tapster Saw” as an illuminating example of petro-magic-realism, a literary mode that arose during the Nigerian oil boom. Petro-magic-realism uses tropes drawn from Yoruba narrative tradition to contend with the state violence and environmental degradation that defined oil exploration in the Niger Delta. In 1958, two years before Independence, Nigeria exported its first barrel of oil from Port Harcourt. That year also saw the publication in London of Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart. The timing of Nigeria’s simultaneous entry into global print and petrocapitalisms on the eve of its independence may have been a historical coincidence, but the imbrication of oil and literature in national imagining and international circulation has continued for decades. From the vantage of the Niger Delta, it is evident that oil has fueled national imagining from the beginning, and that the contradictions within such a project are perhaps better read as an unimagining of national community.

Seven regions are described in terms of their pollution history, other synergistic human pressures, the current challenges and management approaches. Although the timing and detailed impacts vary, primarily for historical reasons, between regions all show similar patterns of change. Sea regions exposed to centuries of human activity (North Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Chesapeake Bay) are considered, as are those for which pollution is more recent (Canadian LOMAs and Coral Sea), and those expected to experience intense pressure in the near future (Arctic Ocean). Nutrients from agriculture and sewage from growing human populations are ubiquitous and not easily managed in marine systems. Controls on industrial discharges have succeeded in halting, sometimes reversing, degradation in some regions (Black Sea, Mediterranean, North Sea, Chesapeake Bay). However, shipping, coastal development and offshore infrastructure continue to apply pressure. While most regions are subject to international agreements and management regimes the effectiveness varies.

This chapter explores how satellite remote sensing can be employed to monitor a wide range of anthropogenic pressures which affect species and ecosystems, in both terrestrial and marine systems. First, it reviews the literature on the use of satellite data to monitor deforestation and forest degradation. It then explores how these data can be used to monitor fragmentation, which is another form of habitat degradation that can represent an important threat to the preservation of biological diversity. This is followed by a review of the use of satellite remote sensing information to monitor urbanisation, night-time light pollution, oil exploration and exploitation, mineral extraction activities, oil spills and run-off, and illegal fishing. The chapter concludes by discussing opportunities for satellite remote sensing to monitor and predict the impact of climate change on biodiversity.

The 1962 revolution in Yemen has often been attributed to the machinations of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. The events of September 1962 were in a manifestation of two decades of growing Yemeni nationalism fostered by an educated cadre of expatriates known as the Famous Forty. Prior to the outbreak of war in 1962, Yemen had been drawn into the growing Cold War conflict. The Soviet Union paid for the construction of the new Hodeidah port while courting an alliance with the “red prince” Muhammad al-Badr, in the hopes that Yemen would become a logistical base for their regional operations. Fearing Soviet penetration on the Arabian Peninsula, the United Statesundertook a series of unsuccessful oil explorations to maintain a nominal presence in a country that could scarcely be identified by American policy makers.

In the mid-1960s the British Government began issuing commercial licences for the exploration of the North Sea for gas and oil. Companies were required to share their geophysical findings with the Ministry of Power, and by 1967 officials in the Ministry were aware that they had a great deal of geological information they could neither analyse nor control. They were also aware that the first licenses would expire in 1970, at which time the Ministry would need to know the value of the licensed areas as another round of licensing began. The Institute of Geological Sciences (now the British Geological Survey) was therefore instructed to begin a rapid survey of the geology of the North Sea on behalf of the Ministry. This expansion of the Institute’s functions shaped it over the following decade, recast relations between ministries and scientific experts, and had long-term implications for the funding of ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ science in Britain.