The Process Of Restriction Against The Principle Of The Freedom Of Fishing On The High Seas

The freedom of fishing on the high seas is a venerable principle of the traditional international law. It was affirmed and repeated by many international legal documents in the past several hundred years. Until the second half of the 19th century, the marine resource was regarded inexhaustible according to the Hugo Grotius. Modern production methods and the explosive consumptive demand broke the belief of infinitude and are driving the marine resource to the verge of the exhaustion. Hence, the principle of the freedom of fishing on the high seas has been restricted enormously in the last half century while the new epoch of management on the marine resource has been ushered in. Yet the matter is not so easy that the freedom is canceled just for the pressure of the resource. We can't help asking why the basic principle with the history of several hundred years can not exist any more and how it came to the end. The article is going to make it clear the turn point of the principle and analyze for the theoretical reasons and characters of relative system.This article consists of four chapters.Chapter one is the inevitability of the process of restriction against freedom of fishing on the high seas. Talking about the establishment of the legal status of the high seas and the freedom of fishing, the author expounded the historic reasons and theoretical basis of the freedom of fishing in the era of Grotius. According to it, two famous theories of the modern international environmental law were introduced that Absolute Resource Scarcity and The Tragedy of the Commons. According to them, the author analyzed the inevitability of the process of restriction against freedom of fishing on the high seas with the view of theory and reality respectively.Chapter Two is the development of the legal restriction on the freedom of fishing. Since 20th century, a series of international legal documents on the restriction have come to existence. There are two main systems of the documents. The first one is the two treaties in 1958 namely the Geneva Convention on the High Seas and Convention on Fishing and Conservation of the Living Resources of the High Seas. The second one is the system of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (including its adjunctive documents).Chapter three is the restriction given by the exclusive economic zone on the freedom of fishing. The establishment of the exclusive economic zone is of much significance because it greatly reduced the scope of the fishing freedom. But the semi- privatization of the common treasure ignited the fiercer exploitation of nations on the rest of the common treasure, which made the irrationality of the freedom of fishing more evident and the collision it resulted in more serious. Meanwhile, the establishment of the exclusive economic zone still cannot protect the highly migratory fish stocks, which reflects the limitation of the exclusive economic zone.Chapter four is the restriction given by the management of the marine resource on the freedom of fishing. To make up for the limitation of the exclusive economic zone and regulate the fishing order, the international community has signed a series of the documents since the 1990s. There are three main treaties that the Code of the Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, the Agreement to Promote Compliance with International Conservation and Management and the Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 Relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks. Analyzed these treaties, the author concluded the characters of the restriction of the management of the marine resource on the freedom of fishing. First, the regional fishing organization will play a more and more important role. Second, the responsibility of the country of flag will be heavier and implemented seriously. Third, the compulsive process leading to forcible verdict has been reinforced, but it is still imperfect.At last, the author briefly talked about the influence to China and wished our nation to join the new times of the high seas management actively.The said above is the main idea of my dissertation. I sincerely wish for your comments and advice.