Marine legislation – The ultimate ‘horrendogram’: International law, European directives & national implementation

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.06.055

Marine Pollution Bulletin

Volume 86, Issues 1–2, 15 September 2014, Pages 39-47

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.06.055 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Marine management worldwide historically has addressed each sector separately.
•
This has produced a patchwork of EU directives and policies and national legislation.
•
This has led to a piecemeal approach to protecting the marine environment.
•
Recent marine environmental legislation has focussed on a holistic approach.
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Here we produce ‘horrendograms’ showing the complexity across vertical governance.

Abstract

The EU is a pre-eminent player in sustainable development, adopting more than 200 pieces of legislation that have direct repercussions for marine environmental policy and management. Over five decades, measures have aimed to protect the marine environment by tackling the impact of human activities, but maritime affairs have been dealt with by separate sectoral policies without fully integrating all relevant sectors. Such compartmentalisation has resulted in a patchwork of EU legislation and resultant national legislation leading to a piecemeal approach to marine protection. These are superimposed on international obligations emanating from UN and other bodies and are presented here as complex ‘horrendograms’ showing the complexity across vertical governance. These horrendograms have surprised marine experts despite them acknowledging the many uses and users of the marine environment. Encouragingly since 2000, the evolution in EU policy has progressed to more holistic directives and here we give an overview of this change.

Introduction

All seas face a number of environmental problems and are subject to competing spatial claims and conflicts between the many uses and users and this is especially so in seas adjoining developed, industrialised and agricultural regions such as Europe (van Tatenhove, 2013). Efforts to resolve these problems have led to extensive current administrative, legislative and management measures which all come under the term Risk Assessment and Risk Management (Cormier et al., 2013). These are then driven by a governance framework, embracing policies, politics, administration and legislation which cascade in a vertical sequence (Elliott, 2014). That vertical sequence requires integration from the international level down to national policies but, as will be shown here, this has resulted in a patchwork of European policies, national policies, private initiatives and regulations on different levels that often conflict with each other.

In Europe, the European Union (EU) is a pre-eminent player in the field of sustainable regional development and in recent decades, it has adopted more than 200 directives, regulations and many other forms of legislation and amendments in the area of environmental policy that have direct repercussions for regional development (Beunen et al., 2009). This policy framework is aimed at the sustainable use of marine resources, but also the protection of the marine biodiversity – indeed the main idea of marine management is to protect and enhance the natural structure, processes and functioning while at the same time delivering the ecosystem services from which society can take benefits (Elliott, 2011, Elliott, 2013).

There is now a complex management framework (Elliott, 2014) in which local, national, regional and international initiatives have to be harmonised. In the case of Europe, at both the EU and Member State levels, progress towards managing and protecting the marine environment has been hindered and is very often insufficient (EC, 2006). In Europe, measures to protect the marine environment by tackling the impact of human activities are not new. In the 1970s, many of the regional seas became the subject of international conventions including the OSPAR Convention for the North Eastern Atlantic, the Helsinki Convention (HELCOM) for the Baltic Sea, the Barcelona Convention and associated Protocols for the Mediterranean Sea and the Bucharest Convention for the Black Sea. Although now having much wider environmental remits, these Regional Sea Conventions (RSCs) were primarily created to address pollution from land-based and vessel-based sources. Historically, other maritime activities were also dealt with by a number of separate sectoral policies (Commission of the European Communities, 2008, van Hoof et al., 2012), which only took into account the priorities of one policy area (i.e. transport, fisheries, pollution etc) without fully assessing the impact across the board and giving equal weight to all the relevant sectors. Such compartmentalisation has led to a piecemeal approach to protecting the marine environment.

To our knowledge, there has been no attempt to collate and produce a synthesis of European marine environmental policies and so this paper aims to demonstrate the volume and extent of current legislation to manage the marine environment. As such it provides an overview and discussion of the types of directives and policies currently regulating European marine waters, emphasising the role of sectoral directives and how these have evolved to more holistic directives and management. To reinforce the point, we produce a road-map of the complex nature of the different types of legislation from International law and European jurisdictions. Given that this then requires an enabling framework within each Member State, we present as a case-example the national implementation in England used to protect the marine environment. We take the view that although we focus on the European situation, the analysis is relevant to all maritime states and will give lessons for those states whose marine use and protection legislation is less well-developed than European and North American states.

The fundamental questions addressed here are:

1)
Is there sufficient marine legislation to adequately manage the marine environment, giving protection to the natural system whilst providing ecosystem services and societal benefits?
2)
Are all sectors adequately managed or do we require better management or better implementation of the current legislation?
3)
Is there an important piece of legislation missing?
4)
Are the levels integrated both vertically (from globally to nationally) and horizontally (in all aspects within one geographical area)?

Section snippets

Principles for environmental management

As marine governance relates to policies, politics, laws and administrations, these are for the wide adoption of eight internationally recognised principles. These are ecologically sustainable development; intergenerational equity; the precautionary principle; Conservation of Biological Diversity and ecological integrity; economic valuation of environmental factors; the polluter pays principle; waste minimisation, and public participation (e.g. EDOWA, 2011).

In turn, the prevailing marine

Sectoral policy

Until relatively recently, the EU approach to the protection of the marine environment has been piecemeal. Since the 1970s, marine based activities have been regulated through a number of sectoral policies, where the sector include fishing, aquaculture, navigation, infrastructure development, agriculture, etc. Each piece of legislation then addressing a particular problem usually in isolation from other issues (Mee et al., 2008), some of which still exist today such as the Common Transport

Vertical integration

As discussed above, all European Member States have to respond to a large suite of international, regional and national policies, laws and agreements controlling many sectors such as fisheries, energy and conservation. Consequently there are many organisations and administrative bodies responsible for these such that in all countries no single authority is responsible for addressing marine affairs (see Elliott et al., 2006, Boyes and Elliott, in press). This has resulted in a patchwork of EU

Discussion

Given the total population of the EU coastal Member States, EU environmental directives contain some of the most influential environmental legislation worldwide, and are ‘binding as to the result to be achieved’. However, these directives have been criticised for often being vague in their commitments, lack specific details, and may contain wider-ranging derogations to soften the potential impact of the new legislation (Bell and McGillivray, 2006, Salomon, 2006, van Hoof, 2010, Rätz et al., 2010

Concluding remarks

Firstly it is emphasised that in compiling and widely discussing the analysis here, it has been notable that observers have been surprised by the complexity and amount of current marine legislation, even though they were aware of the large number of marine activities which required controlling. Environmental protection requires adequate legislation but on condition that a fit-for-purpose and not disproportionate bureaucracy is provided.

Secondly, the historical view has shown a

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr Bob Earll and the delegates of the Coastal Futures 2014 – Review and Future Trends (January 22nd-23rd) for providing their comments and critiques of the earlier drafts of this diagram produced for writing this paper. We hope your views have been taken on board. Despite this, the authors take full responsibility for the figures in this article and would welcome any further comments on their accuracy and completeness.

The research leading to these results has

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ViewpointMarine legislation – The ultimate ‘horrendogram’: International law, European directives & national implementation

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Principles for environmental management

Sectoral policy

Vertical integration

Discussion

Concluding remarks

Acknowledgements

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Viewpoint
Marine legislation – The ultimate ‘horrendogram’: International law, European directives & national implementation