Issues regarding oceans and opportunities: an introduction to the topic - Ocean Sustainability in the 21st Century - page 19

sustainable use of marine biological diversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction (cf.
Chapters 9 and 10 ) .
Treves ( 2010 ) advocates the notion of 'the primacy of the LOS Convention' when
dealing with such emerging issues, as well as in relation to agreements that fall outside the
LOS Convention framework. The practice being that few states dare to oppose the LOS
Convention or even specific provisions of it. However, the LOS Convention does not have
answers to all of the problems of the oceans. This applies, in particular, to subjects that are
treated toosummarily orarenotconsidered atall,asexemplified bytheissuesofstraddling
and highly migratory fish stocks and of underwater cultural heritage. Another example is
that of issues related to the legal regime of genetic resources in the seabed beyond the lim-
its of national jurisdiction, for which a specific process (the Ad Hoc Working Group) has
been set up, which may lead to a process comparable with that which brought about the
Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (cf. Chapters 9 and 10 ) . Another category is
that of issues which fall outside but also impinge on the LOS Convention, such as interna-
tional environmental law, international human rights law, international trade law, the law
of international security including terrorism and migration by sea, and developments in re-
gional integration and cooperation and illegal immigration by sea.
Treves ( 2010 ) concludes with the remark that while most of the problems that fall in
thefirstcategorycanprobablybedealtwiththroughthebuilt-inflexibilityoftheLOSCon-
vention, the complex nature of the questions in the second category and the heterogeneous
character of the rules involved make their solution difficult and challenge the rather precise
and coherent framework provided by the LOS Convention. The author suggests the pos-
sibility that approaches which would overcome the built-in limitation of the notion of high
seas may be required to deal with such questions as the ecosystem approach (cf. Chapter
6 ) , concerns linked to climate change and its effect on the oceans (cf. Chapters 3 , 4 , and 5 )
and the preservation of marine biodiversity (cf. Chapters 4 , 5 , 6 , 9 , 10 , and 12 ) .
The approach based onthe primacy ofthe LOS Convention is being increasingly chal-
lenged. Scovazzi ( 2010 ; cf. also Chapter 10 of this topic) tackles the challenging question
of whether UNCLOS provides the legal framework for dealing with the case of biopro-