The International Obligation Of Marine Ecosystem Management And China’s Solutions

Given the seriousness and systematicness of marine environmental problems as well as failures of traditional marine management, ecosystem management has become the trend of modern maritime law. Currently, ecosystem management has been applied to marine management practices in many countries and regions, which is also adopted by a number of international marine environmental management legislative documents. Thus implementation of marine ecosystem also has become an international obligation and China ought to take action. However, China’s marine environmental legislation has not really implemented this idea which is the fundamental flaw of the legislation, and cannot satisfy urgent needs of current marine management. Therefore it is necessary for China to introduce ecosystem management in its legislation.Starting from ecosystem management, this thesis, combined with China’s marine management legislation and practices, will put forward some suggestions on how to select the marine environmental management legislation mode by introducing and analyzing marine environmental legislation in different countries and regions. This thesis mainly consists of four sections.In the first instance, this thesis introduces the connotation of ecosystem management, including integrated management, treating human activities as the object of management, focusing on the overall ecosystem and adaptive management. And it elaborates the necessity and urgency of implementing the marine ecosystem management. Secondly, it describes the current situation of China’s marine environmental management legislation, which turns out it still adopts a decentralized legislative mode. In addition, this section clarifies how to choose the legislative mode of marine environmental management and proposes the decentralized legislative mode should be gradually converted to a comprehensive one. Subsequently, it describes as well as compares the marine environmental management legislation of US, EU and Japan, reflecting the characteristics of the legislative mode of marine environmental management based on ecosystem management, including integrated management philosophy, paying attention to the combination between the central legislation and local legislation as well as between the general law and special law. Besides, the difference in the legislative path of special law also satisfies the requirement of taking measures suiting local conditions, which is asked by the ecosystem management. In the end, referring to the legislative experience of US, EU and Japan, it sets forth the deficiencies of China’s current marine environmental management legal system, including the lack of a framework legislation, comprehension, pertinence and coordination. Then it puts forward several recommendations to improve China’s marine environmental management legislative mode, like enacting national marine integrated management law and special law.