This collection addresses the central question of how the current international framework for the regulation of fisheries may be strengthened in order to meet the challenges posed by changing fisheries and ocean conditions, in particular climate change. International fisheries law has developed significantly since the 1990s, through the adoption and establishment of international instruments and bodies at the global and regional levels. Global fish stocks nevertheless remain in a troubling state, and fisheries management authorities face a wide array of internal and external challenges, including operational constraints, providing effective management advice in the face of scientific uncertainty and non-compliance by States with their international obligations. This book examines these challenges and identifies options and pathways to strengthen international fisheries law. While it has a primarily legal focus, it also features significant contributions from specialists drawn from other disciplines, notably fisheries science, economics, policy and international relations, in order to provide a fuller context to the legal, policy and management issues raised. Rigorous and comprehensive in scope, this will be essential reading for lawyers and non-lawyers interested in international fisheries regulation in the context of profoundly changing ocean conditions.

Resting on the simple logic of market economics, this book considers the ways in which groups of States can lawfully and effectively deny market access to the flag of convenience fishing industry.

Analyses the concept of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the international instruments which provide the legal and policy framework to combat IUU fishing. Palma, Tsamenyi and Edeson, University of Wollongong, Australia.

New Knowledge and Changing Circumstances in the Law of the Sea focuses on the challenges posed to the existing legal framework, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the various ways in which States are addressing these challenges.

As fish stocks continue to decline worldwide, coastal States seem to have largely failed in effectively managing fisheries in their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). This study examines the international legal principles for effective EEZ fisheries management and assesses their domestic implementation in a comparative perspective. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, as well as general international law, provides a useful range of norms for sustainable EEZ fisheries management, if carefully interpreted. These include the coastal State's obligation to ensure that the maintenance of the living resources in its EEZ is not endangered by over-exploitation. Additional obligations include the duty to maintain or restore populations of target species at sustainable levels, the determination of catch limits for stocks affected by exploitation, and the duty to apply the precautionary approach. In addition to such environmental requirements, issues of distributive justice and procedural fairness are also included in the analysis. The second part of the book evaluates the implementation of the international legal standards in five selected coastal states (Kenya, Namibia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico) and the EC. It focuses on the determination of total allowable catch, the allocation of individual fishing authorizations, and the regulation of foreign access to EEZ fisheries as exemplary management measures.

Until recently, the international community failed to adopt either an agreed limit for the breadth of the territorial sea or a satisfactory regime of fisheries in the waters adjacent to the territorial sea. This provoked an eruption of unilateral acts by which coastal states extended their jurisdiction towards the high seas. The Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea accepted the establishment of a 12-mile territorial sea and a 200-mile exclusive economic zone. While taking into account the non-existent rights and interests of the so-called geographically disadvantaged states and of states with broad continental shelves, the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea practically ignored existing rights and interests of habitual fishing states. It maintained the well-established principle of freedom of fishing on the high seas but with specific conditions. Dissatisfied with the Convention's regulation of fishing on the high seas, a few states elected to hold a U.N. Conference on Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks which adopted the 1995 Agreement for the implementation of the provisions of the Convention relating to the conservation and management of such stocks. Similarly, some of these states, like Chile, Argentina, and Canada, adopted legislation extending their jurisdiction beyond their respective 200-mile fishing or exclusive economic zones. This book explores these events in the historical development of the international regulations of fisheries and concludes with a look into recent developments in the area.