Marine Pollution under the Law of the Sea Convention

It is now 30 years since the conclusion of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil marked the international community’s first serious attempt to cope with the increasing scale of marine pollution. Since then, pollution of the seas by oil, chemicals, nuclear waste and the effluent of urban industrial society has continued to grow and to cause ever more serious damage to the living resources and ecology of the marine environment and to the shores of coastal states. The control, reduction and elimination of marine pollution has become one of the major issues in the contemporary law of the sea and it has proved to be a complex task, requiring the creation of a new and growing body of international law. This process, though in certain respects still incomplete, has reached its potentially most significant stage of codification and development through the provisions of the Law of the Sea Convention of 1982.