Branches of international environmental law - Introduction to International Environmental Law - page 144

the seas from the dumping of radioactive waste'. These 'obligations' had little
impact on the protection of the marine environment. They were so limited
and vague that they did little to prevent states from continuing to pollute the
sea at an accelerating rate. This was not unusual in 1958; international envi-
ronmental law was still in its infancy and the belief still prevailed that it was
impossible to do any real damage to the oceans as they are so vast.
The second UN Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1960 was a failure (the
parties were unable even to agree on the breadth of the territorial sea), but the
third negotiating conference turned out to be a success. The objective was to
agree a single international convention, a package deal, to be applied to all
oceans and all maritime issues, and the objective was accomplished. The entire
international community continued to negotiate from 1973 until the Convention
was signed in 1982. The resulting UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS) 8 recorded the basic rules that generally regulate all activities on all
the seas. The UNCLOS permits no reservations: states must ratify it in full.
Part XII of the Convention comprehensively regulates all marine pollution,
whether from land, from activities in the seabed, from dumping waste, from
vessels and from or by air. It includes provisions related to intervention in marine
contamination that are general but comprehensive, such as Article 194(2):
States shall take all measures necessary to ensure that activities under their
jurisdiction or control are so conducted as not to cause damage by pollu-
tion to other States and their environment, and that pollution arising from
incidents or activities under their jurisdiction or control does not spread
beyond the areas where they exercise sovereign rights in accordance with
this convention.
It also contains rules to ensure that states 'shall act so as not to transfer,
directly or indirectly, damage or hazards from one area to another or transform
one type of pollution into another' (Article 195). The obligations are of a very
general nature and contain no clear legal guidance. A good example of how
general the UNCLOS provisions are can be seen in the way they applied to
the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
The oil rig Deepwater Horizon , operated by BP, exploded and started to burn
on 20 April 2010, about 70 kilometres off the Louisiana coast, sinking two days
later. Several oil-rig workers died in the accident, and the wellhead, about 1,500
metres deep, began to discharge substantial amounts of crude oil. By 2 July,
the oil had already contaminated parts of the coasts of the states of Alabama,
Missisippi and Louisiana, and representatives of the government estimated that
approximately 100,000 cubic metres of oil had been spilled into the sea.
According to UNCLOS Article 192, 'States have the obligation to protect
and preserve the marine environment'. This principle applies to the oil disaster