Introduction – the regulatory system

The disposal at sea of waste generated on land and loaded on board vessels for dumping is the object of long-standing global, and (in many areas) regional, systems of regulation. (These systems also cover, for completeness, dumping from aircraft and waste (other than operational discharges) from fixed installations in the sea). Such dumping must be distinguished from discharges into rivers and directly from land into the sea and emissions to air from land-based activities discussed in Chapter 20 (Land-based inputs).

When concerns about the environment developed in the 1960s, growing constraints on the land disposal of waste and discharges into rivers led to pressures to find new routes for waste disposal. Concerns about these pressures led to action in several forums. Several United Nations specialized agencies set up the Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution (GESAMP1 – later altered to “Marine Environmental Protection”).

The preparatory committee for the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, set up by the United Nations General Assembly, established an intergovernmental working group on marine pollution. At the national level, several countries started developing approaches to control such dumping. The United States of America put forward proposals for an international agreement on the subject. Spurred from the national level by an attempt by the vessel Stella Maris to dump 650 tons of chlorinated waste, several countries started developing approaches to control such dumping. States adjoining the North-East Atlantic adopted an international convention regulating dumping in that area in Oslo, Norway, on 15 February 1972 (OSPAR, 1982; IMO, 1991).

Later that year, the Stockholm Conference adopted a set of principles for international environmental law and called, among other things, for an international instrument to control dumping of waste at sea. The United Kingdom, in consultation with the United Nations Secretariat, organized a further conference in London, and the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter 1972 (the 1972 London Convention) was signed on 13 November 1972 in London, Mexico City and Moscow (ICG, 1982, IMO, 2014f).