The concept of ocean governance: Evolution toward the 21st century and theprinciple of sustainable ocean use

The concept of ocean governance encompasses norms, institutional arrangemen ts, and substantive policies. The new ocean regime, for which the Third Uni ted Nations Law of the Sea Conference was the midwife, is based on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but the 1982 convention b y itself was clearly insufficient to rake the world community into the twen ty-first century. It has been supplemented by Agenda ZI of the UN Conferenc e an Environment and Development (UNCED) of 1992; the Global Programme of A ction for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activiti es of 1995, and the United Nations Agreement on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks of 1995. Even with these additions the fabric of the new ocean regime is insufficient to confront the new challenges face d by human use of the marine environment. Present patterns of human utiliza tion of the world ocean are not sustainable over an indefinite future. Ther e is an urgent need to breathe life into the notion of "sustainability" to make it into a fundamental norm of the new world ocean regime. This article explores what such an effort would require in terms of norms, institutiona l arrangements, and substantive policies.