The law of the sea is developed from centuries of national practices; China’s practice has also played a role in that process. International law was introduced into China in the late Qing dynasty. After the Opium War in 1840, the Qing dynasty government had to learn and accept international law, including the law of the sea, as created by the Western countries in order to negotiate and communicate with them. From 1840 until the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, there were some practices in applying the law of the sea in China focussing on territorial sovereignty and fisheries interests. In the 1970s, the Chinese delegation participated fully in UNCLOS III, ushering in a new era in the practice of the law of the sea. China has made important contributions to the formulation of UNCLOS. It has actively implemented the law of the sea through domestic practices including legislation, law enforcement and judiciary, as well as bilateral consultations and cooperation on law of the sea issues with its maritime neighbours. China is committed to upholding the maritime order with the United Nations at its core and based on international law.

This Chapter studies the management of living resources under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea considering the so-called precautionary principle/approach. It strives to give insights on the question whether the UN Convention demands application of the precautionary principle/approach with respect to the management of living resources vel non. The notions of the precautionary principle/approach, management and lastly that of living resources are discussed to evaluate the demand on common grounds. Taking the Southern Bluefin Tuna cases as a departure point, the analysis focuses on Part XII of the UN Convention. Finally, it gives an outlook on potential consequences of the required application to the ’package deal’.

The chapter considers the contribution of the ICJ to the law of the sea, highlighting four areas where the Court has made a key contribution to the development of the law: maritime delimitation cases, the status of islands and rocks, navigational rights in straits and lastly, the conservation of natural resources. The author notes that the Court’s influence is not equal in all of these areas, but emphasises the significant rule that the Court has played in developing the principles and rules of international law applicable to maritime boundary delimitations.

This chapter offers a plausibility probe of IST in the case of China and the contemporary liberal international order. The LIO – a multifaceted set of institutions covering a range of security and non-security issues – has contributed immensely to China’s economic growth, diplomatic influence, and national security. China, nonetheless, opposes some and embraces other parts of the international order. The chapter shows that existing theories of revisionism struggle to explain this pattern of cooperation and discord in China’s approach. It then traces China’s status aspirations in the post-Cold War period and applies IST’s predictions to China’s stances in various prominent international institutions. The chapter concludes that IST can broadly apply in this case across institutions and issue areas, though further research is required to decisively demonstrate this claim.

This chapter “examine[s] the encounter between Irish literature as a ‘terrestrial form of thought,’ and the ocean as a putatively alien environment.” John Brannigan draws on a host of Environmental Humanities scholarship, most specifically from Blue Humanities; his reading treats the oceanic as a critical and material space providing alternative epistemologies to humanity’s dominant land-based knowledge systems. In the “encounter with the maritime” such terrestrial thinking “would find a scene of negation, radical otherness, or utopian or dystopian release.” The chapter begins with an important reminder of “The Real Map of Ireland, a dataset resulting from the Irish National Seabed Survey which mapped the 220 million acres of “land under the sea” over which Ireland is entitled to claim sovereignty and “exclusive economic rights” under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).” This new submarine “territory” that extends to almost a thousand kilometers across the Atlantic Ocean and the Maury Channel, and to the south over three hundred kilometers, Brannigan argues, “marks a submarine treasure map” and is open to capital’s inexhaustible extractive appetite.

After a sketch of the history of the law of the sea and the traditional freedoms of the sea, this chapter discusses the various efforts to codify the law of the sea during the twentieth century, which culminated in the adoption of UNCLOS in 1982. Subsequently, the chapter examines the legal regimes governing the various maritime zones, as well as two international areas: the high seas and the Area. The chapter then takes up thematic issues in the law of the sea, namely the delimitation of maritime boundaries, the protection of the marine environment, the special interests of developing countries, and the system for the settlement of law of the sea disputes. The chapter concludes by noting that, despite the relatively comprehensive scope of UNCLOS, a number of new challenges have arisen with respect to the law of the sea, especially as a result of human-driven climate change.

After a sketch of the history of the law of the sea and the traditional freedoms of the sea, this chapter discusses the various efforts to codify the law of the sea during the twentieth century, which culminated in the adoption of UNCLOS in 1982. Subsequently, the chapter examines the legal regimes governing the various maritime zones, as well as two international areas: the high seas and the Area. The chapter then takes up thematic issues in the law of the sea, namely the delimitation of maritime boundaries, the protection of the marine environment, the special interests of developing countries, and the system for the settlement of law of the sea disputes. The chapter concludes by noting that, despite the relatively comprehensive scope of UNCLOS, a number of new challenges have arisen with respect to the law of the sea, especially as a result of human-driven climate change.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), four tribunals are provided to interpret and apply the Convention. When it was concluded, the enumeration of the four tribunals, including permanent courts such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), was said to lead to the risk of fragmentation of UNCLOS. However, so far, they seem to have successfully avoided such risk by interpreting and applying the Convention harmoniously, in other words, through the harmonised operation of UNCLOS. Meanwhile, the fact that the operation of UNCLOS is still at an early stage should be noted. The more cases these tribunals handle, the more flexibility they lose. This loss of flexibility may become a new cause of fragmentation of UNCLOS, because if each tribunal is bound by its own case law and adheres to it, it becomes difficult for each tribunal to take into account the decisions of other tribunals and operate UNCLOS uniformly. Against this background, this chapter contrasts the practice of courts and tribunals established under the UNCLOS in relation to cross-fertilisation and consistency in legal findings. This chapter also discusses how harmonised operation of UNCLOS can be reconciled with differences in the practice of the UNCLOS tribunals.

Because of its transboundary effects and because states will be the primary actors, large-scale solar geoengineering and its governance are matters of international law. This is the final of four chapters that consider international legal rules, here those that fall outside the previous chapters’ scopes. Multilateral agreements govern activities and impacts in areas beyond national jurisdiction, including Antarctica, outer space, and the oceans. The comprehensive UN Convention on the Law of the Sea governs solar geoengineering that would take place in the marine environment or would likely result in deleterious effects there. The parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, a far-reaching agreement, have issued three nonbinding decisions concerning geoengineering, the only such negotiated consensuses from representatives of most countries. The Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques proscribes solar geoengineering's hostile use. Among the four major international legal forums that help resolve disputes in broad ranges of issues, the UN Security Council could address problematic or contentious solar geoengineering.