Cooperation In Combating Pollution In Cases Of Emergency In Regional Seas With Analysis Of Classification Of Interests

Chapter 1 is Development History of the Regime of Cooperation in Combating Pollution in Cases of Emergency in Regional Seas (herein after as the emergency regime). This chapter is to trace back the course of the emergency regime. With tracing back the origin, it is to be found that the pollution incident of oil spillage at seas was the direct inducement of the creation of the emergency regime. Whereas, with deeper research, it is to be found that the need to balance economic development interest with marine environmental interest was the intrinsic cause to the creation and development of the emergency regime. Post World War II, economic development was the primary mission for states, which incurred some grave pollution incidents of oil spillage at seas. Facing with the grave pollution, the international community began to take notice of the interest of marine environment, to which the most direct reflection in international law was the rapid spread of Regional Seas Programmes under the auspices of United Nations Environmental Programme (herein after as UNEP). The advocates of the emergency regime in the beginning favored the interest of economic development being limited by that of marine environment. While with the adoption of the Rio Declaration in 1992, the concept of sustainable development began to be brought into the marine environmental protection regimes. Marine environment is also taken as"environment for development". Nowadays, the emergency regime is not only to balance the interests of economic development and marine environment, but gets developed with respect to its legal framework, application objects and provisions. In general, the history of the creation and development of the emergency regime is the course of the contending and compromise between interests of economic development and marine environment.Chapter 2 is Interest analysis of the Regime of Cooperation in Combating Pollution in Cases of Emergency in Regional Seas. As understood from the title, this chapter attempts to analyze the emergency regime with the method of interest analysis. Interest is undividedly related to human nature, which came into the field of social science with the needs of human living and ways of human living. Whereas the method of interest analysis has always been applied in the field of social science. This chapter furthers with bringing forward the method of classification of interests, which classifies interests related with the sustaining of human living as living-sustaining interest, and those related with the promotion of ways of living as developing interests. Marine environmental interests protected by the emergency regime belong to the classification of living-sustaining ones; and those affecting the establishment and application of the emergency regime belong to the classification of developing ones. Generally speaking, the protection of living-sustaining interests overwhelms the protection of developing ones when those contending with each other. Furthermore, this chapter also explores the general and specific theories and principles which underpin the emergency regime. In general theories, the author synthesizes the useful parts of natural, positive and social jurisprudences. In specific principles, the author analyzes the ration of preventive principle, cooperative principle and limited sovereignty principle, which lays the theoretic foundation the two drafts for the Northwest Pacific Region and the East Asia Seas Region in chapter 4.Chapter 3 is Patterns of the Regime of Cooperation in Combating Pollution in Cases of Emergency in Regional Seas. This chapter makes a review of the patterns of the existing emergency regimes, which may be described as the independent pattern in the North Sea and the Northeast Atlantic Region, the synthesis pattern in the Baltic Region and the typical synthesis-independent pattern in the Mediterranean Sea Region. By examination of these three patterns, the establishment of the emergency regime is determined by the fundamental status of marine environmental interests, while the situations of political and economic interests in the region affect those more specific aspects of the emergency regime, i.e. the pattern of the establishment of the regime, the leading role of the regime, the methods used, the extent of the cooperation in the regime. The success in the North Sea and Northeast Atlantic Region, to a great degree, rests with the consistency the political and economic interests in the region; the synthesis pattern in the Baltic Region was due to the fundamental divergence of political interests between the"Eastern and Western"systems; the synthesis-independent pattern in the Mediterranean Sea Region, is determined by the leading role played by France in that region. Further, this chapter makes a summary on the lessons learned from the existing regimes.Chapter 4 is Extension of the Regime of Cooperation in Combating Pollution in Cases of Emergency in Regional Seas. This chapter studies on the situation of cooperation in combating pollution in cases of emergency in the Northwest Pacific Region and the East Asian Seas Region. Among the 18 regional seas in the world, these are the only two regions without the emergency regime, while China is a partner to both of these regions. Recently, the adjustments within Chinese economic structure and economic developing pattern, the reform of Chinese marine environmental protection regime and the rapid development of its response capability make China to be adequate with the capabilities to push the establishment of emergency regime in these two regions. Whereas, to avoid the deepening of divergence of political interests between different parties in these regions, it's preferable to"push"instead to"lead"the regime establishing course. With analysis of the characteristics and political and economic interests situations within the two regions, the author proposes that the regime establishment in Northwest Pacific Region should learn more from the Baltic Region, while the regime establishment in East Asian Seas Region should learn more from the Mediterranean Sea. Furthermore, the author raises more specific suggestions on the establishment of emergency regimes in these two regions, and on the approaches how China may push forward the establishment. Finally, the author proposes two drafts on marine protection and emergency regime for the two regions respectively.Chapter 5 is Promotion on the Regime of Cooperation in Combating Pollution in Cases of Emergency in Regional Seas. On how to promote the emergency regime, this chapter attempts to realize this goal by making studies on those factors which affect the elements of the emergency regime. Those factors are to be further classified as those on global level and regional level. Factors on global level are primarily the liberalization of international economy and the development of international marine environmental protection law. Factors on regional level are primarily the trend of economic region as well as of political region. Both global and regional factors will bring about positive and negative impacts on the development of emergency regime. Whereas the promotion of the emergency regime lies with how to make use of the positive impacts when dispelling the negative ones, for which cooperation is the most critical factor. Generally speaking, the more overlapping between the political and economic interests with the marine environment interest in the same region, the more favorable to the promotion of the emergency regime. With the specific aspects of how to promote the emergency regime, there are three dimensions to be taken into consideration, one is to promote the cooperation pattern, the other is to promote the cooperation extent, and another is to change the guideline from"response"to pollution incident to"preventing"pollution incident.