Implementation of IMO Legal Instruments: International Technical and Financial Cooperation - Prevention of Pollution of the Marine Environment from Vessels - page 127

conventions is always on the developed world. These conventions undoubtedly are
reactive instruments not proactive instruments.
7.3 Legal and Institutional Aspects of Implementation
As discussed earlier, the MARPOL 73/78 and other IMO Conventions have some
provisions relating to implementation and compliance. Here, we look at how far the
implementation mechanisms in these treaties are successful in ensuring the overall
domestic enforcement of international regulation in the developing countries;
mainly focusing on the concerns of pollution-prevention activities within the
marine areas under the jurisdictions of LDC States. These countries have simulta-
neous interests as coastal, port and flag States. The group of LDCs is undoubtedly
the weakest in the IMO regime. The existing literature on this subject very rarely
touches the issues of developing or LDC coastal States.
The MARPOL 73/78 Convention specifically imposes obligations on flag,
coastal and port States to: enforce and ensure compliance with the discharge and
the CDEM 21 standards by all national and foreign ships; to provide reception
facilities; and to submit reports on these activities to IMO. Developing countries
generally have a low degree of compliance with these obligations. Tan identifies
compliance of treaty obligations as a function of three factors: legal authority,
capacity, and incentives. 22 For a developing country, the latter two are more critical
than the first. As parties to the international treaties and, in some cases, due to State
sovereignty, developing countries possess the same legal authority as developed
States. Undoubtedly, developing countries lack the same capacity to act and, in fact,
sometimes believe that there is no tangible incentive for them to comply with IMO
conventions on the prevention of vessel-source pollution. Unlike developed plural-
ist democracies, conservation of the marine environment is not a major priority for
governments of developing countries.
One of the fundamental problems with the IMO conventions is that the majority
of them have been initiated only in response to major pollution incidents in the
developed world. Consequently, these international developments attract no polit-
ical attention in the developing world; the coastal developing States, having
relatively small numbers of ships, largely disregard developments in international
regulation. That does not necessarily mean these countries are not parties to these
conventions; many have ratified these conventions without any preparation for
implementing the same.
21 CDEM—construction, design, equipment and manning.
22 Tan ( 2006 ), p. 236. This idea is initially developed by R. O. Kehone, see Mitchell ( 1994a ,
b ), p. 11.