A Study On Fishery Resource Conservation And Principle Of Sustainable Development

Both International Law and Domestic Law are legal systems, although they do share some general legal consciousness and principles; however it definitely does not mean the legal concept which Domestic Law applies can also be adopted by International Law. For example, Fishing activity can be defined as "anyone who occupies res nullius and builds up ownership" in Domestic Law system, but the term "occupy" in International Law system works as building up a nation's jurisdiction, not as the ownership of acquisition. This explains the fact that the right of individual ownership of property does not apply to International Law, therefore Fishery Resources is de facto res nullius. Although the international community has brought up the concept of "common heritage of mankind" or "common interest of mankind", trying to regulate the issue of distribution of natural resources which shared by all human beings, the two ideas mentioned above cannot be applied to characterize fishery resources because of the notion of International Law.Fishery resources are the main target of International Trade, due to fact that fishery resources are res nullius, every country is trying to get as much resources as they could base on "first come first serve" idea. Eventually this kind of competition causes the reduction of ecological restoration and certain species of fish are facing the possibility of extinction. Therefore, the International Community has started to think about this issue and try to find out a solution to balance the ecology and trading development. Although whether the principle of sustainable development has become the general principle of law in International Law is still under official confirmation, when it comes to the issue of fishery, most of the countries have started to follow the above principle. Many formal declarations of international conferences and documents have adapted that concept, for example even though UNCLOS did not have clear definition in either multilateral convention, bilateral agreement or international file, the actual actions between some regional organizations and countries are following the idea of sustainable development. Also WTO has even changed the statement which made by GATT in 1947 from "...full use of the resources of the world" to "...optimal use of the world resource".Fisheries subsidies have great influence on the sustainable development of fishery resource, the international community has already launched relevant research and revising current ACSM. Even thought there were diverting opinions about this issue which made it difficult to reach an agreement on whether fishery subsidies should be strictly regulated, it is still can be sure that the increase of fishery subsidies will have negative impact on the sustainable development of fishery resources. Besides the fact that regional fishery management organizations suggest participants to take certain protecting measures on specific fishery resources based on the principle of sustainable development, every country also carries on their own protective trade-related measures, such as making sure all of the import products are being exanimate under strict food safty regulations, the fish products which access into the market should have eco labels or catch documentation schemes of origin and species. All of these measures may be able to serve national interests, however it will not be easy to pass the inspection of WTO as the principle of WTO is the liberalization of trade. Some critic thinks WTO totally obliterates the efforts that countries made to maintain the ecology restoration and suggest ITLOS should take care of this kind of cases. In fact, case like this which involves trading and natural resources will be limited by the function of treaty itself, neither WTO nor UNCLOS has relevant protocol to solve the issue. When a single issue is being regulated by two different treaties or norms, finding solutions from Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties or from general law principle are both not workable. Only when all of the involving judicial organizations cooperate with each other, temporarily exchanges information or even to establish the information exchange mechanism can prevent and reduce disparity and then to create a win-win situation.