In the last 30 years since the initiation of Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms, China scholars have been preoccupied with a single question: Is China developing a civil society? Will the emergence of non-Party organizations eventually challenge the authoritarian context and bring about political liberalization and democracy? The fact that this prospect has not yet materialized is often attributed to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strong control of the sphere of social organization and, in particular, to the restrictive regulatory framework that governs the operation of domestic and foreign NGOs.

After the shock caused by the Liberian tanker “Torrey Canyon” accident in 1967 off the United Kingdom coastline, member States of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) established a special international regime aiming at ensuring adequate compensation for victims of pollution damage caused by oil spills from ships.The first instrument concerning tanker pollution was the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage, adopted in Brussels on 29 November 1969 and entered into force on 19 June, 1975.

The European continent has a rich rural heritage, shaped over the years by human activities. It is made up of an exceptional variety of land types, reliefs, climates and crops. It is possible to consider that heritage provides a bridge between the past and the present, but it is useless to preserve it unless it can be given a guaranteed future and handed down to future generations.

At the dawn of the 21st century, we slowly and painfully create a globalized international environment, where technology and the energy that powers it become of paramount importance. Indeed, in the context of the Rio+20 Conference in June 2012, the UN Secretary-General referred to a new emerging human right of primordial importance: a right of access to energy, that would enable vulnerable populations to ac-quire access to information and technology and thus escape the vicious circle of exclusion, illiteracy and poverty.

As I have suggested some years ago and ever since, the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean and its seven Protocols, the so-called Barcelona Convention system (BCS) – along with all regional or global conventional environmental regimes – should be constructively explained as a conventionally determined international trust regime. The BCS sets up a conventional regime of international common interest (ICI) governing the protection of the marine environment and the resources of the Mediterranean in a sustainable manner so that the needs of present and future generations should be met in an equitable manner.

The Rio+20 Summit is widely regarded as a failure: “Yet another UN mega-conference ends in disappointment…”; “The Rio+20 Summit produced a largely meaningless document that failed to address the daunting environmental challenges the world faces”; the outcome of Rio+20 displays “a colossal failure of leadership and vision”.While expectations of civil society, scientists and parts of the business community have been high, the outcomes of Rio+20 are sobering.