The Council of Europe actively promotes sustainable development in line with Recommendation Rec (2002) 1 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on the Guiding Principles for Sustainable Spatial Development of the European Continent, which were adopted initially by the Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Regional/Spatial Planning (CEMAT).  The Action Plan adopted by the Heads of State and Government at the Third Council of Europe Summit in Warsaw, on 17 May 2005, includes a section on “Promoting sustainable development” which provides that: “We are committed to improving the quality of life for citizens.  The Council of Europe shall therefore, on the basis of the existing instruments, further develop and support integrated policies in the fields of environment, landscape, spatial planning and prevention and management of natural disasters, in a sustainable development perspective”.

By Resolution MEPC.380(80) of 7 July 2023, the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) designated the North-Western Mediterranean Sea as a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA). It is the sixteenth PSSA so far established and the second in the Mediterranean Sea.

PSSAs are areas that need special protection through action by IMO because of their significance for recognized ecological, socio-economic or scientific reasons and which may be vulnerable to damage by international maritime activities. They can be established according to a set of Revised guidelines for the identification of PSSAs, adopted in 2005 by the IMO Assembly under Resolution A.982(24), as amended in 2015 by Resolution MEPC.267(68).

The continuous expansion of the offshore industry due to the increasing energy demands may have serious detrimental impacts on the marine environment, which in the smaller regional seas could be hardly reparable. Suffice to mention the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest marine oil spill to date.

Prevention activities are therefore very important, although the risk of pollution, due to the extremely ultrahazardous  nature of offshore drilling, cannot be completely eliminated This main characteristic of offshore activities makes liability for their injurious consequences almost as much important as prevention measures, as far as the victims are concerned.

Considering international law and the non-linear phases of its long historical development, there is a compelling theoretical-practical need – but one that is not confessed by the dominant positivist thinking that permeates it: to  delve into, and evaluate the normative quality of the horizontality of international order. In other words, to delve into the process of the horizontal normativity of international law in its unceasing pursuit and polycentric flowing construction of the international common interest on which international society is based and evolves. This is a characteristic contemporary neglect that goes hand in hand with the intolerable limitations imposed by the positivist methodology of international law that imbues the religious-like "fundamental belief" of the modern era of “non-thoughtful international lawyers” that international law exists and develops as an analogy of private law, that treaties are concluded as discrete transactions and function like private law contracts.

In November 2022, China’s State Council announced a spatial layout plan for national parks. It selected 49 candidate areas for building national parks, including the first five that had all been recently developed. After these 49 planned parks are established, China will have the largest national park system in the world, covering close to 10% of the country’s land area and protecting 80% of its key wildlife species and their habitats. This plan, involving 700 existing protected areas and 10 world heritage sites across 28 provinces, is just one component, and not even the largest, of a series of mega initiatives that China has been rapidly implementing to enhance biodiversity conservation in recent years.

Last March 4, 2023, Rena Lee, President of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Conference on an Agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (the BBNJ Agreement), announced with emotion and symbolic words the happy outcome of the process: “the ship has reached the shore”. After 20 years of work, including 6 years of formal negotiations and 36 uninterrupted hours of final consultations behind closed doors, all outstanding issues had been overcome and the President was able to present a text reflecting the end of the negotiation. The process was successfully completed, pending final editorial refining of the text, translation into the six official languages of the United Nations, and formal adoption of the Agreement, which is scheduled for June 2023.