Effects of Land-based Activities

Article 207 of UNCLOS requires States to adopt laws and regulations to prevent, reduce and control pollution from land-based sources and to endeavour to establish global and regional rules, standards and recommend practices and procedures, acting especially through competent international organizations and diplomatic conferences. In addition, States are required to enforce such laws and regulations and to implement applicable international rules and standards in keeping with article 213 of UNCLOS.

Two international documents were adopted by an Intergovernmental Conference in November 1995: the Washington Declaration on the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities and the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (United Nations document A/51/116). The Global Programme of Action addresses the impacts of land-based activities on the marine and coastal environment including contaminants, physical alteration, point and non-point sources of pollution, and such areas of concern as critical habitats, habitats of endangered species and protection of ecosystem components such as breeding and feeding grounds.

The General Assembly of the United Nations, at its fifty-first session, adopted the institutional arrangements for the implementation of the Global Programme of Action  (resolution 51/189). The General Assembly designated the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as the lead agency in the implementation of the Global Programme of Action. In this connection, the UNEP Governing Council in a decision in 1997 endorsed UNEP's role as secretariat of the Global Programme of Action, and accorded priority to the implementation of the Programme of Action in UNEP's work programme. The Council further confirmed the need, expressed in General Assembly resolution 51/189, for States to take action at the next meetings of the governing bodies of the relevant United Nations organizations to endorse those parts of the Programme of Action relevant to their respective mandates. In the same decision, the Council also requested the Executive Director of UNEP to communicate with the governing bodies of the relevant organizations and programmes, recommending that each competent international organization formally endorse those parts of the Global Programme of Action relevant to its own mandate and that each organization accord priority to the Global Programme of Action in its own programme.