132 



vention is intended to cover all forms of pollution emanating from vessels, except 

 for the dumping of wastes at sea and pollution directly arising out of exploration 

 and exploitation of seabed mineral resources. It will extend, thus, beyond pollu- 

 tion from vessels by oil, to cover noxious substances other than oil, and ship- 

 generated sewage and garbage. The draft proposes additional technical require- 

 ments regarding design, equipment and operational procedures of tankers, aimed 

 at reducing the risk of pollution from tankers. In addition, the conference will 

 have before it a draft of a treaty relating to Intervention on the High Seas in 

 the Case of Pollution by Substances Other Than Oil, in the form of a protocol 

 to the 1969 convention relating to Intervention on the High Seas in Cases of Oil 

 Pollution Casualties, which applies the principles of that convention to noxious 

 and hazardous substances other than oil. 



The 1972 convention on the Dumping of Wastes at Sea, which was not pro- 

 duced through IMCO, completes the collection of treaty regulation of ocean pol- 

 lution by vessels as this body of international law has developed to the present 

 time. The convention adopts the so-called black list-grey list approach to regu- 

 lating the dumping of waste at sea, absolutely prohibiting the dumping of certain 

 highly toxic substances, and allowing the dumping of certain other noxious sub- 

 stance only under a special regime requiring permits from the coastal state. The 

 approach taken is the same as taken by an earlier 1972 convention adopted by a 

 number of states bordering the North Sea and North Atlantic, the Oslo Con- 

 vention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution of Dumping by Ships and Aircraft. 



The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) also requires mention, 

 because of its potentially important role in the devising of international measures 

 for the protection of the marine environment. UNEP is a newly created special 

 intergovernmental body within the United Nations, consisting of a governing 

 council of fifty-eight member states and a secretariat headed by an Executive 

 Director, Mr. Maurice Strong of Canada, who was the Secretary-General of the 

 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1973. 

 Its job is essentially to maintain a continuing review of the state of the global 

 environment and of the development of policy with respect to it, to recommend 

 or initiate policy and programs in the fields of environmental protection, and to 

 coordinate the activities of the United Nations system as a whole with respect 

 of the environmental protection. It has at hand the vast body of conclusions and 

 recommendations of the Stockholm Conference, including a number relating to 

 protection of the marine environment against land-based pollution and other 

 injuries not clearly dealt with by the existing body of specific treaty regulation 

 I have just discussed. But UNEP is in no sense a regulatory body. It has no com- 

 petence to produce treaty law or other forms of regulatory standards, nor is it 

 expected to have any organic connection with a new treaty on the law of the 

 sea despite the fact that ocean matters are among its concerns. It will have an 

 important role within the United Nations system to play with respect to any 

 agency which does have regulatory or other operational competence, including 

 for tlie time being IMCO, with which it will doubtless maintain a continuing 

 liaison, and to which it might well make policy recommendations. 



May I turn now to the main arena of action, the emerging law-of-the sea ne- 

 gotiations. I have suggested that, through these negotiations, the international 

 community is in a process of revising, perhaps radically, the principles by which 

 ocean space has been managed. In order to understand what is at stake in this 

 effort, we should first take a brief backward glance. Politically, the earth's sur- 

 face has been organized for the last three or four hundred years on the basis 

 of two fundamental legal principles. Like most good constitutional i)rinciples, 

 these are so ingrained a part of our way of thinking about the order of things 

 as to be taken (piite for granted. I refer to the principle of national territoriality, 

 by which the bulk of the earth's land surface is carved up in^o discrete pn',ches 

 subject to the iKilitical authority of the sovereign entity called a national state; 

 and to the principle of freedom of the seas, by which the bulk of the earth's 

 saltwater area is deemed to be under the authority of no one. and free for such 

 uses as any may wish to put it to. subject on'y to noninfringement of the like 

 rights of others. The jninciple of freedom of the seas was evolved by the great 

 maritime i>owers of Europe, essentially as a means of coining with the fact that 

 no one of them had the physical ability to impose its hegemony over sufl^ciently 

 large portions of the open ocean to serve its own maritime interests adtMpiately. 

 It has dominated the ocean law and practice of the entire world for several 

 centuries, an obvious response to the interests of powerful maritime nations in 

 being able to navigate the ocean with a minimum of interference. 



