Introduction

Despite the drastic changes that property rights over fisheries resources have been subject to since the creation of exclusive economic and fishing zones and despite the crisis the United Nations system is currently experiencing, international institutions still continue to exert a marked influence on national and international policies. Access to resources (United Nations convention on the Law of the Sea – UNCLOS), trade (World Trade Organization – WTO), international co-operation (the UN and regional organisations), research, technical and scientific advisory bodies, international statistics (Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO), and supra-national political organisations (EU) are only a few examples of the dynamic and forceful role a wide range of organisations and institutions play with regard to fishing, fisheries management and policies.

The theory of governance specifically insists on new social and political agents in the decision-making process and on political control over new production and marketing practices. With this in mind, international institutions, particularly United Nations institutions and Regional Fisheries Organisations, traditionally devote efforts to strengthening institutions in less developed countries and regions and boosting public policies. To a certain extent the new trend towards greater roles for the market and civil society entails the risk of weakening public action and in more general terms state action as well. Although this is part of the logical evolution of more developed states, it renders less-developed ones more vulnerable, lacking as they do the institutional framework that allows public and private action to be balanced out.

Institutional Development in Ocean Governance

The institutional pillars of ocean governance have recently been drawn up around the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982) and its predecessors the First and Second Conferences, the United Nations Convention on Environment and Development (UNCED 1992) and more specifically Agenda 21, the seventeenth chapter of which is devoted to oceans and coastal areas.

UNCLOS (1982) in particular can be interpreted as the final phase of maritime tradition in the modern era with the oceans conceived as an issue for the international community ruled by the principle of mare liberum and inspired, prior to the reform of Part XI and the Agreement on Straddling Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, by public action as a balance to the inequalities between states (the Area as the common heritage of mankind and the establishment of bodies such as Authority and Enterprise).