Branches of international environmental law - Introduction to International Environmental Law - page 146

established more detailed rules for a particular marine area or for preventing
contamination from a particular source. Inspired by the 1972 Stockholm
Conference, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) launched its
Regional Seas Programme, in which 143 states currently participate.
It covers 13 regional seas ranging from the Black Sea to the South-East
Pacifi c and from the Mediterranean to Western Africa. Many of these
regional seas are administered by soft-law type programmes but there are
some highly advanced treaty regimes within their protocols - such as the
Mediterranean regime.
It is important to note that the UNCLOS does not include specifi c rules as
to how states should protect their marine environments; it gives the coastal
states considerable discretion. The regional conventions might refer to the
UNCLOS in their preambles but they operate largely autonomously to
prevent regional marine problems. This is because the UNCLOS only creates
the general framework for more detailed regulation, actually encouraging
states to implement the general obligations at the regional level. UNCLOS
Article 197 declares:
States shall cooperate … as appropriate, on a regional basis, directly or
through competent international organizations, in formulating and elabo-
rating international rules, standards and recommended practices and
procedures consistent with this convention, for the protection and preser-
vation of the marine environment, taking into account characteristic
regional features.
The UNCLOS gives only limited instruction of how states should be
expected to address the numerous sources of pollution in a regional sea.
In 1974, seven Baltic Sea coastal states (now nine) signed the Helsinki
Convention, 9 which entered into force in 1980. Its Article 12 established the
Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, more commonly
referred to as the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM). This was a pioneering
convention: it was negotiated and entered into force while the international
community was still negotiating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
It set a signifi cant example for the UNCLOS negotiations as it was the fi rst
convention aimed at preventing marine pollution from all sources.
The Baltic Sea ecosystems are unique (only certain species can live in brack-
ish water) and the sea has faced severe environmental problems (for example,
eutrophication, threats to endemic species from foreign invasive species, and
reduction in its salt concentration due to climate change). In addition, traffi c
in the Baltic Sea region has increased considerably in recent years. Intense
environmental protection measures are therefore essential. After the Cold
War, and as international marine and environmental law changed, the Baltic
Sea coastal states, together with the then EC, updated the Convention in 1992.
The new Convention 10 entered into force in 2000. One essential difference