The article provides legal analysis on co-dependence between nautical and aviation regulations in international law and practice. The study focuses on overflight rights with respect to civil and military aviation across distinct types of waters as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982) where the Author differentiates the common legal standard from particular legal regulations giving rise to divergent practices of some countries. The article touches also a number of issues relating to maritime security (including the threat of piracy) and to environmental protection in the context of regulation and practice of airborne activities carried out by states’ authorities and services.
The United Nations began working on the codification of the Law of the Sea in 1958, when four conventions were adopted in Geneva, namely the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, the Convention on the High Seas, the Convention on Fishing and Conservation of the Living Resources of the High Seas, and the Convention on the Continental Shelf The conventions came into force in 1960. This was the first UN Law of the Sea conference and was organized under the auspices of the International Law Commission. In 1960 the second UN conference on maritime law was also held in Geneva and was dedicated to describing territorial seas. However, it did not succeed in reaching agreement regarding the six-mile territorial sea and six-mile fisheries zone. The third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea took place between 1973 and 1982. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea from 1982 confirmed the right of each country to declare its territorial seas at limits of up to 12 nautical miles. The number of participating countries represented at the Law of the Sea conferences had increased with 157 national representatives in attendance at the third UN conference. In addition to issues of territorial sea width, other topics discussed included investigations and exploitation of marine resources outside of state jurisdiction, the legal status of sea areas and their countries, the rights and obligations of the largest exploiters of seas and oceans and principles of their cooperation. The author gives a high evaluation of the Law of the Sea codifications, which were prepared with the participation of the United Nations.
The author first analyzes in detail the range and form of normalizations of scientific-technical issues in the new maritime law known as the UN Convention of Montego Bay of 1982. A substantial impetus for the compromise solutions taken in this convention was the divergence of priorities between highly-developed and developing countries that occurred at the III Maritime Law Conference. In the second section of the article, the author discusses and comments on issues of the protection of rights to industrial property according to the principles of the TRIPS accords determined at the Marrakesh round of the GATT-WTO. In his analysis, the author also takes into consideration selected aspects of European Union legislation, the modernizing licensing of transfer technology, and EU policy that supports marine research and the exploitation of the so-called "deep resources”. Thus, the article presents and emphasizes new aspects of maritime scientific-technical cooperation and transfer technology which had yet to be analyzed from this aspect in the Polish legal literature regarding maritime law.
The author discusses legal aspects of contemporary aquaculture in a broad sense, and as a type of farming marine organisms, especially fish, in a situation of significant overfishing of many basins. Marine aquaculture is, among other things, connected with biotechnology and genetic engineering, and also with the protection of the marine environment against pollution coming from marine aquaculture farms along the shore. In connection with this, various technical solutions are adopted, for example, in the form of protective artificial reefs that surround farms and modern electronic monitoring. The European Union has introduced appropriate legal regulations with regard to aquaculture, and special, interdisciplinary research programmer with the aim o f producing a comprehensive report that considers, for example, legal aspects and economic issues of environmental protection in the neighborhood of fish farms. The EU deals with the issue of aquaculture in the context of the shore line economy and also on a nearly global scale - within the framework of aid programmers for developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. The author points out the legal aspects of aquaculture, analyzing specific regulations of the UN convention on the law of the sea (1982), and the regulations of the Gdańsk Convention (1973) and the Helsinki Convention (1992). He also considers FAO and EU regulations in which one may find direct and indirect references to aquaculture, also in the matter of environmental protection. Experience from European, Middle Eastern and Asian basins, relating to the legal aspects of marine aquaculture, needs to be generalized and ultimately transformed into appropriate legislative solutions.
The study overviews selected issues regarding interconnection between law of the sea, maritime law and space law. The analysis concerns general principles on application of space technologies to remote sensing of the sea as set forth in the Convention on the Transfer and Use o f Data of Remote Sensing of the Earth from Outer Space (1978) and the Annex to the United Nations Resolution 41/65 on Principles Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth (1986). The article also surveys Convention on the International Maritime Satellite Organization (INMARSAT 1976) together with Operating Agreement and covers some aspects o f International Maritime Organization’s use of space technology in application of International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS 1960, 1974, 1980), International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS 1972) and International Ship and Port Facility Security Code (ISPS 2002). The author describes how sea monitoring and exploration through satellite technology affects maritime legislation and discusses its impact on application of conventions for maritime environment protection, resource management, transportation and safety.
This article has taken on contemporary relevance because of the acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia. The UN, NATO, the EU, and the IMO (International Maritime Organization) are addressing the issue of piracy. The African Union is also involved in security operations in Somalia. The author discusses the decisions of the Rome Convention (1986) on combating illegal actions taken against security at sea. It is also worth examining the legal rules accepted by ASEAN with the aim of combating maritime piracy in north-east Asian waters, especially in the Malacca Straits. These, however, do not remove the sources of piracy - poverty, the weakness of state organs, corruption, and the black market. The international community, mainly within the UN, should adopt legislation that will avoid and more effectively combat maritime piracy.
The article gives an account of a legally unprecedented instance of utilisation of offshore platform ‘Odyssey’ and her accompanying ship ‘Sea Launch Commander’ for launching satellites into orbit. The platform is operated by an international partnership company called ‘Sea Launch’, which unites commercial undertakings within space and maritime industries from USA, Russia, Ukraine and Norway. The article discusses selected legal issues arising in areas of law of the sea, admiralty and space law, as well as issues relating to coordination of partners’ efforts in legal and administrative spheres. The company eventually went through bankruptcy (Chapter 11) procedure; the author investigates legal and economic causes of this matter. Finally, the article iterates proposal for a new international convention on space transport, which would include a comprehensive regulation on launching objects into space from offshore facilities.
The article outlines development of freedom of fishing in the high seas against the backdrop of the negotiations leading to Geneva conventions on law of the sea, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 1995 United Nations agreement concerning the conservation and management of straddling stocks and highly migratory fish stocks. The author quotes opinions of scholars within the subject of the law of the sea as well as of UNCLOS co-originators, thelatter formulated on 30th anniversary of the Convention.
The author focuses on overfishing and international, regional and subregional co-operation towards sustainable fishery, prevention of illegal and uncontrolled fishing and acts of fishing piracy. Finally, the article outlines European Union law and policies on fishing, including broader issues regarding co-operation between the EU and international entities.
This paper addresses the legal aspects of and measures for resolving contemporary disputes regarding marine areas. The author describes issues related to resolving disputes in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982. This system includes the following elements: the principles of the obligatory use of peaceful measures to resolve disputes and the principle of the freedom of the choice of peaceful measures by the parties. The freedom to choose resolution measures can be limited if previously applied measures, especially diplomatic ones, failed. The scale of these measures is described in the 1982 convention and range from the simplest to more complex measures. Thus, these measures range from those described in bilateral, regional, or common agreements, those agreed upon by diplomatic means to conciliation through arbitration and the courts. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg plays a key role in resolving international maritime disputes. However, the author states that the system for resolving such disputes is wide ranging and rather complicated. Disputes worthy o f discussion are those related to the delimitation of sea areas. Issues concerned with sea area delimitation and division are of key importance in the UN convention of 1982. The United Nations Convention of 1982 outlines a rather coherent system for resolving international maritime law disputes. Bilateral and regional were combined with common measures, while public and private law resolution measures were combined. Thanks to the convention, countries have a wide choice of resolution forums for disputes arising from the application of the convention. This convention still plays an insufficient role in the creation of peaceful measures for resolving disputes in accordance with the norms outlined in the convention. It is expected that the new International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea will facilitate this thanks to its procedures and the wider jurisdiction in maritime cases than is provided by the International Court of Justice. The participation o f the UN Secretaiy General and other organizations has been widened in the structure of this system. Complex principles for separating the jurisdiction of tribunals, courts, and other appropriate organizations in resolving maritime disputes have come into force.