4 PRINCIPLES IN MARINE-ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION - A COMPARATIVE-ANALYSIS

The protection of the marine environment is propelled in part by speci fic principles that yield normative prescriptions to guide conduct. Fo ur of these-namely sustainable development, pollution prevention, prec aution, and the polluter pays-are all ultimately characterized as prin ciples. In that form they are, in terms of general juridical efficacy, prescriptively imprecise and capable of generating an interlocking ar ray of more specific norms that may be applied to realize their common goal of keeping the seas clean. In comparison, their conceptual indiv idualities coincide and reinforce each other as to normative content a nd implications, as well as the procedural prescriptions they could an d do, interpretively, yield.