국제해양환경법의 성립과 발전에 관한 연구

Abstract

Matters on protecting the marine environment such as restricting marine pollution cannot be dealt in isolation of international law and particularly international maritime law. Moreover, in recent 20 years it has developed as an independent part of international law called as international environmental law. The subjects of this law are state responsibility in international law on international pollution, general international laws including UN Declaration on the Human Environment and general rules analogised by various international conventions on marine pollution. The main effort in developing international environmental law was international attempts on protecting the marine environment, and these attempts came into success in the 3rd Conference of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea(UNCLOS III).

Generally, the extent of international environmental law not only includes the area of protecting the marine environment but also includes protecting the national water quality on lakes or rivers, atmosphere and the outer space. Since, the sea is the terminal of all pollutions, the importance of the problem of protecting international waters has moved to problems on pollution from land-sources, and pollution from or through the atmosphere is also dealt comprehensively in the area of protection of the marine environment, it could be concluded that the most essential and practical content of international environmental law is included in the scope of international marine environmental law. Especially, the problem which cannot be overlooked in environmental protection is pollution from nuclear substances which is important in land but can be dealt by national law system while in the sea, international efforts are urgently needed to deal with this problem and the pollution's spreading effect can immediately cause serious damages world widely. Therefore, regulations of this area on environmental protection have to be included in international marine environmental law. To consider this matter in this light, international marine environmental law can be defined as a normative system which constitutes the main context in environmental law in reality which is formed of various rules, standards and procedures in international environmental law to prevent marine environmental pollution and the whole customs of restrictions and international cooperation to preserve and protect the marine environment.

Such international environmental law has developed after World War II when the importance of marine environment was being emphasized and led to the modern concept of international marine environmental law. Nevertheless, this did not manage to overcome the traditional international law such as absolute state jurisdiction principle, freedom in the high seas, flag state principle in the current decentralised international society. Accordingly, environmental protection rapidly arose as a task to the whole human generation and consequently like in principle 21 of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, each state had to introduce a new law system on taking legal responsibility on environmental damages outside its jurisdiction. The efforts on establishing a new system of international marine environmental law came to success in UNCLOS which establishes the existing declaratory and recommendatory provisions on marine environmental protection to international legal rights and obligations which became the opportunity of consolidating marine environmental protection as a new area of international law.

In Particular IMO has played a major role to take root the International Marine Environmental Law over the last decades since its establishment. IMO cooperates with the MEPC as a central figure and other committees such as the MSC and the LEG to prevent marine pollution and has close relationship with IOC GESAMP, UNEP which are sub-organs of UNESCO. In addition to that, the MEPC works with member states of IMO but the working environment is quite hard since the interest of states against each other. Since IMO has long history of participating to the protection of marine environment it should be revaluated and approved as an important institution which played great roles in development of International Marine Environmental Law. IMO, therefore, would take an important part in settlement of the International Marine Environmental Law in the near future.