Moir posts about the National Ocean Policy and recent controversy over funding
The necessity of a top-down National Ocean Policy is that it instructs managers to work in collaboration across managerial boundaries. The wonder of the National Ocean Policy was for leadership of the Interior (the National Park Service), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Coast Guard and the Navy to announce that they would work together across institutional boundaries, share resources, reduce redundancies, and develop more robust solutions for responsible ocean stewardship.
Implementation of the National Ocean Policy is now being challenged simply because the call for working across institutional boundaries came from the President by Executive Order. It was not requested by Congress. While a most appropriate action for the Commander in Chief, the President belongs to one political party. Today the other political party can not abide by the president’s order. Their complaint is not based on the merits, other than more government is bad. Based solely on party dogma, they campaign to gut funding for the National Ocean Policy and thwart its implementation.
