The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, global justice, and the environment
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, global justice, and the environment
The recent fortieth anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has sparked a good deal of reflection and retrospection. Looking back, it is clear that the Convention’s architects carefully navigated, and selectively absorbed, a number of competing visions of oceanic governance, from freedom to enclosure to visions of Global North–South equality. This made the Convention’s construction period a very drawn-out and painful one – longer than for any other international treaty in history – and while some hopes were realized, others were dashed. Forty years on, it is important not to let its current canonical status blind us to the fact that the Convention came close to being a failure, and that things could have gone differently at a number of critical junctures. Nor should it stop us asking whether UNCLOS is really fit for purpose today. In this article, I situate the Convention within wider developments in the global economy and the global environment, and consider the role it has played in promoting goals of global justice and environmental protection.
Global North-South equality, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), environment, global justice, oceanic governance
16-20
Armstrong, Christopher
2fbfa0a3-9183-4562-9370-0f6441df90d2
3 August 2023
Armstrong, Christopher
2fbfa0a3-9183-4562-9370-0f6441df90d2
Armstrong, Christopher
(2023)
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, global justice, and the environment.
Global Constitutionalism, 13 (1), .
(doi:10.1017/S2045381723000151).
Abstract
The recent fortieth anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has sparked a good deal of reflection and retrospection. Looking back, it is clear that the Convention’s architects carefully navigated, and selectively absorbed, a number of competing visions of oceanic governance, from freedom to enclosure to visions of Global North–South equality. This made the Convention’s construction period a very drawn-out and painful one – longer than for any other international treaty in history – and while some hopes were realized, others were dashed. Forty years on, it is important not to let its current canonical status blind us to the fact that the Convention came close to being a failure, and that things could have gone differently at a number of critical junctures. Nor should it stop us asking whether UNCLOS is really fit for purpose today. In this article, I situate the Convention within wider developments in the global economy and the global environment, and consider the role it has played in promoting goals of global justice and environmental protection.
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Global Constitutionalism piece
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Accepted/In Press date: 28 June 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 3 August 2023
Published date: 3 August 2023
Keywords:
Global North-South equality, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), environment, global justice, oceanic governance
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 478684
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/478684
ISSN: 2045-3817
PURE UUID: 2c9413be-bcef-445a-98db-9d03c1e804cd
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Date deposited: 07 Jul 2023 16:33
Last modified: 12 Jul 2024 01:43
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