Adopted in 2005 by the Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention, Mediterranean Strategy for Sustainable Development (MSSD) provides a regional response to the global sustainable development agenda and the Millennium Development Goals. It provides an integrated policy framework for achieving the vision of a sustainable Mediterranean region and for the elaboration of national sustainable development strategies in riparian countries.

Marine litter, generated mostly from land and sea-based sources and activities, has become a rapidly increasing complex problem facing to date the world’s oceans and seas.

The perspectives of sea-level rise and the potential legal issues that could ensue are not new for international law. Pioneering studies on the subject were published almost a quarter-century ago; however, their focus was on aspects concerning the law of the sea. In recent years, several publications on international law and climate change – monographs focusing on specific aspects such as forced migration, or collections addressing various other aspects involved – have contributed by introducing a range of legal concerns surrounding the perspective of sea-level rise.

The Arctic is a very special place. It is a region and it is an ocean. But “[t]here is no universally accepted definition of [the] Arctic Ocean” (Koivurova and Duyck, 2010 @ p.180). A working definition might include “the tree line (the northernmost boundary where trees grow) or the 10 °C isotherm (the southernmost location where the mean temperature of the warmest month of the year is below 10° C °).” Geographically, others conclude that the Arctic Circle begins at 66°, 33”latitude. For some international law purposes the Arctic is defined by memberships in institutions and governance mechanisms of the entities in the “Arctic region.”

Over the last thirty years, climate change and the depletion of the ozone layer have been widely believed to be the world's largest environmental challenges. Although both problems have many similarities, constituting the two principal threats to the global atmosphere, the effectiveness of the regimes that were established to address them varies significantly.