The future BBNJ agreement as an opportunity for building a collaborative governance for the protection of the marine environment beyond national jurisdiction

Abstract

This work argues that the future Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, currently under negotiation, may constitute an opportunity to start to build a collaborative governance for the protection of the marine environment of these common areas which allow overcoming the current fragmentation and jurisdictional perspective. Thus, this study, firstly, explains the normative and institutional fragmentation; secondly, it identifies the elements of the Agreement that make it possible to build a collaborative governance - on the one hand, the incorporation of the duty to cooperate with other instruments, legal frameworks and competent global, regional, subregional and sectoral bodies, and, on the other hand, a constructive interpretation of the mandate of the UNGA not to undermine those previous instruments, legal frameworks and bodies; and, thirdly, the work suggests various substantive formulas aimed at improving coherence, coordination and mutual reinforcement between the future regulation and other regional and sectoral regimes: the adoption of common environmental objectives and goals, the assumption of shared environmental principles, the approval of common principles of good governance , the creation of some shared infrastructures, the implementation or reinforcement of transversal tools and the establishment of shared control mechanisms.