Abstract The Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) has recently entered into force, prompting intensified efforts to operationalize its institutional and procedural architecture. While the Agreement aspires to provide a unifying framework for the governance of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), its decentralized institutional design is likely to rely heavily on regional and sectoral bodies for the implementation of area-based management tools and marine protected areas (MPAs). This article assesses the Collective Arrangement between Competent International Organisations on Cooperation and Coordination Regarding Selected Areas in Areas beyond National Jurisdiction in the North-East Atlantic (CA) as an instructive case study for understanding the challenges of coordination and cooperation among international frameworks and bodies (IFBs) under conditions of entrenched fragmentation. Although established to promote coordinated conservation measures in the North-East Atlantic, the CA has evolved primarily into an information-sharing and consultative platform, with limited substantive impact on regulatory practice. Key competent IFBs, including the International Maritime Organization, the International Seabed Authority, and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas—have not formally joined, and minimal spatial overlap between OSPAR MPAs and North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission closures has curtailed opportunities for cross-sectoral management. By analysing the CA’s trajectory, the article distils lessons for the regional implementation of the BBNJ Agreement. It argues that informal cooperation alone is insufficient to generate coordinated outcomes and proposes a hybrid model combining formal accession by competent IFBs with flexible participation by non-competent actors. While the CA illustrates both the potential and fragility of regional governance mechanisms, the BBNJ Agreement may provide new avenues to strengthen such arrangements. Ultimately, the effectiveness of both the CA and the BBNJ regime will depend on the willingness of states and IFBs to translate cooperation mandates into concrete, cross-sectoral action in ABNJ.
Bastiaan E. Klerk (Wed,) studied this question.