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Freestone, David --- "Foreword" [2015] ELECD 1131; in Rayfuse, Rosemary (ed), "Research Handbook on International Marine Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) ix

Book Title: Research Handbook on International Marine Environmental Law

Editor(s): Rayfuse, Rosemary

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781004760

Section Title: Foreword

Author(s): Freestone, David

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

Foreword


At 3 am in the morning of Saturday 24 January 2015, nine hours after the meeting was
scheduled to have ended and while a snowstorm raged outside the UN HQ in New
York,1 an historic document was concluded. The so-called BBNJ Working Group
reached consensus on the text of its final recommendations to the UN General
Assembly. The process of reaching this consensus has taken nearly a decade; the first
meeting of what is properly called the `United Nations Ad Hoc Open-ended Informal
Working Group to study issues relating to the conservation and sustainable use of
marine biological diversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction' was held in 2006.
The agreed text recommends that the UN General Assembly `Decide to develop an
international legally-binding instrument under the [Law of the Sea] Convention on the
conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national
jurisdiction.'2 This agreement, to start the process of negotiating what is expected to be
a third Implementing Agreement to the 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention, is indeed
historic.
Elsewhere I have called the governance of marine areas beyond national jurisdiction
the `final frontier'.3 These areas are the last great global commons areas on Earth ­
covering nearly half the surface of the planet. Moreover, it has also been suggested that
the current characteristics of the ABNJ regime with regulatory and governance gaps,4
weak implementation and enforcement of existing rules5 and widespread illegal,
unreported and unregulated fishing6 ...