Part V Subject Matter, Ch.31 The Protection of the Marine Environment Pollution and Fisheries

This chapter begins by looking at the role of the 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS) as the framework legal instrument on the oceans. Indeed, the UNCLOS is one of the most significant international law instruments of all time and is at the core of today's governance of the oceans. UNCLOS is a product of the time when it was negotiated, which brought together a desire to provide global stability to competing jurisdictional claims over the oceans and devise solutions to rapidly increasing rates of marine pollution. However, technological changes and increased or unforeseen sources of pollution and habitat destruction have exposed some of the Convention's limitations, which derive from a fragmented perspective of the marine environment, and a failure to address the interaction between different ocean uses and marine stressors and provide rules on the conservation of marine biological diversity. The chapter then evaluates global and regional treaty requirements, soft law instruments, and case law concerning the protection of the marine environment from various sources of pollution, and the conservation of marine living resources, with a focus on fisheries, and the protection of marine biodiversity.