Redefining environmental stewardship to deliver governance frameworks for marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction

In 2015 the United Nations General Assembly decided to develop an international legally binding instrument (ILBI) under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction. To that end, it established a Preparatory Committee (PrepCom), to make substantive recommendations to the General Assembly on the elements of a draft text of an ILBI. The PrepCom has identified the tension between the principle of the common heritage of mankind and high seas freedoms embodied in UNCLOS as one of the issues which must be addressed in such an international agreement. Some participants in the process have proposed a sui generis regime as a way of resolving any apparent clash of these international legal principles, particularly as it relates to marine genetic resources and their access and benefit sharing. This article argues that environmental stewardship may provide the framework for such a sui generis regime. For it to do so, however, it must be grounded in international legal principles and act as a balance between competing values, perspectives and interests in the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction. If appropriately redefined in this way, environmental stewardship can deliver a governance framework which addresses some of the central issues with which the PrepCom will have to deal. These include the practical problems of access and benefit sharing of the marine genetic resources of areas beyond national jurisdiction, and reconciling the conflicting pressure for international decision-making for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity on the one hand, and the maintenance of existing regional and sectoral frameworks on the other. Environmental stewardship, redefined, can provide an intellectual framework for an ILBI under UNCLOS on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction.