Tools to conserve ocean biodversity: developing the legal framework for environmental impact assessment in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction

Several decades of endeavor since the 1972 Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment have produced an established international law framework for the protection of the marine environment with the focal point being Part XII of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC), supplemented by complementary instruments on international environmental law and an evolving body of customary international law principles. Substantial jurisdiction with some collaboration between states in differenct regions to promtect the marine environment across national boundaries. The regulatory framework for environmental protection in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction is at a much earlier stage in its development, gradulayy emergin against a backgroudn of increasing hpuman activities in these vast ocean areas as threats to the rich repository of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction are beginning to be recognized in different sectors of activity.