Straddling Stocks

We will concentrate on (a) understanding the problem of access to common resource (high seas) fisheries, and in particular the ‘free-rider’ question; (b) the techniques deployed in the 1995 UN Straddling Stocks Agreement to address these problems and the question of fisheries regulation generally. Please read the relevant provisions of the 1982 Convention (Articles 51, 55-73, 116-120, 122-123) and the whole of the 1995 Agreement carefully, to prepare for a close reading of the Agreement.

Reading:

Churchill & Lowe, ch 11 and pp. 296-310.

For general fisheries law links see http://www.oceanlaw.net/

For the text of the 1995 Straddling Stocks Agreement , see http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/fish_stocks_agreement/CONF164_37.htm and 34 ILM 1542 (1995) 29 LOSB 25. And see http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/convention_overview_fish_stocks.htm for ratifications etc.

H N Scheiber, Law of the Sea. The Common Heritage and Emerging Challenges (Nijhoff, 2000), esp. pp. 104-126

F Orrego Vicuña, The Changing International Law of High Seas Fisheries (CUP, 1999), esp. pp. 119-144.

O S Stokke, Governing High Seas Fisheries (OUP, 2001), esp. pp. 329-355

D. Anderson, ‘The Straddling Stocks Agreement of 1995’, 45 ICLQ 463-75 (1996).

P. Örebech, K. Sigurjonsson, T. McDorman, ‘The 1995 UN Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks Agreement’, 13 IJMCL 119-42 (1998).

R. Rayfuse, ‘Enforcement of High Seas Fisheries Agreements’, 13 IJMCL 579-606 (1998).

International Seabed Area

We will concentrate on (a) understanding why Part XI was thought unacceptable to certain States, and (b) how the ‘defects’ were addressed in the 1994 Agreement. Part XI is very complex, and you will probably find the textbook the best way into the detail, and you need not try to memorize all of the detail. Please read through the relevant provisions of the 1982 Convention (Articles 136-191, and Annexes III and IV), and the 1994 Agreement, trying to grasp the main lines of each but not all of the detail [and the textbook identifies all of the main points and some of the detail].

Reading:

Churchill & Lowe, ch. 12.

The text of the 1994 Implementation Agreement appears at http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/closindxAgree.htm

Ratifications appear at http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/convention_agreements.htm

Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, Symposium, The entry into force of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, Vol. 55 (pp. 273-420) (1995).

D. H. Anderson, ‘Resolution and Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea: a general assessment’, 55 ZAOVR 275-289 (1995).

L. D. M. Nelson, ‘The New Deep Sea-Bed Mining Regime’, 10 IJMCL 189-203 (1995).