Environmental Governance of the Great Seas – Law and Effect

The  authors  adopting a comprehensive and contextual approach to the environmental governance of the great seas provides an insightful analysis of six regional seas (The Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the East Asian Seas, the Mediterranean Sea, the West and Central African Seas, and the Wider Caribbean Region) selecting them on certain criteria: accessibility of relevant literature on conditions of the sea; the nature and extent of threats; the nature and extent of threats; variety in the sources and causes of those conditions, and variety of governance schemes; geographical diversity; proposed solutions, seeking to identify particularly effective examples; and strategic importance.

The authors address the specific roles of the Law of the Sea and the United Nations Regional Seas Programme and discuss the importance of better information exchange between scientists and policymakers, increased funding, greater participation, and new and more effective laws. National, regional and international initiatives are conceptualized as clusters, and their success evaluated using three indicators of effectiveness: effectiveness indicated by physical parameters; effectiveness indicated by contributions of and to international environmental law; and effectiveness indicated by improved relations among states and peoples. Perhaps, the most pragmatic theoretical lesson to be drawn is embedded in their “word on causation”: “Our conclusions about activity in a cluster and outcomes are qualitative and general. It is not possible in the complex environments we are analyzing to describe convincing causal links between individual law and policy initiatives and actual outcomes (whether they be cooperation or improvement of the physical condition of the seas). Many other forces are at work in response of both physical and social systems. And even if elaborate modeling could describe pathways in a convincing manner, data challenges would be enormous, if not overwhelming”

The book will be of great interest to policymakers, students and scholars in the fields of law and policy as well as marine and environmental sciences.