Oceans Law and Policy in the Post-UNCED Era: Australian and Canadian Perspectives

The late twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of international treaties and agreements relating to maritime issues and oceans governance. In part this reflects an attempt to reduce uncertainty in an era when the emergence of a new global strategic, political and economic order is creating tensions within and between nations; in part it reflects an attempt to resolve major issues of global environmental management with respect to marine jurisdictions; in part a recognition that the trade-off between conservation and development poses many complex questions requiring to be resolved through bi-lateral and multilateral discourse. While each maritime regime has been created to meet an identified need or serve a particular purpose, more attention needs to be devoted to interrelationships since regime overlap can have beneficial, neutral or dysfunctional consequences. As we near the end of the current millennium, it is essential to determine how oceanic regimes should relate one to another.