The North Sea

The North Sea, one of the most intensively used sea-areas in the world, may well be one of the most intensively regulated sea-areas as well.

As human activity developed in the North Sea national and later international regulations followed these developments.

The result has been what is commonly called a piecemeal approach.

The legal regime of the North Sea has developed in an incremental manner.

Thus one conventional instrument after the other, covering different user-functions like vessel-source pollution, fisheries, ocean dumping and land-based pollution, was adopted.

In contrast to more modern approaches these legal instruments have their own framework.

The result is that the instruments are scattered in many different documents, and even for the more well informed North Sea watcher it is difficult to obtain a comprehensive overview of the regulatory instruments.

The North Sea: Basic Legal Documents on Regional Environmental Co-operation offers a comprehensive view of the instruments dealing with all sources of marine pollution in the North Sea, be they ocean dumping, land-based pollution or vessel-source pollution.

The book contains many legal documents, including maps and tables.

It also contains non-conventional instruments such as the texts of the declarations of the International North Sea Conferences, held between 1984 and 1990, and recommendations and decisions of e.g. the Paris Commission on Land-Based Pollution and the Oslo Commission on Dumping.

Furthermore the book contains documentation on relatively new areas of environmental concern in the North Sea region, i.e. nature conservation and management of living resources.

The book supplements The North Sea: Perspectives on Regional Environmental Co-operation also edited by David Freestone and Ton IJlstra which contains 26 essays on legal and policy aspects of environmental protection in the North Sea.