유엔해양법협약 40년 간의 발전에 대한 평가: 제12부 해양환경 보호 및 보전을 중심으로

When United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was adopted, the Part XII of UNCLOS aimed to respond the pollution of marine environment and to elaborate responsive measures from its sources. After 40 years later, the Part XII of UNCLOS has developed toward evolving into forming the corpus of international environmental law in the field of the ocean rather than to elaborate the various responsive measures against pollution sources. It could be regarded as an evidence that UNCLOS is well settled as a living instrument of the law of the sea. Furthermore it shows that reasoning why UNCLOS is called as the constitution of the law of the sea. The jurisprudence of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea observed that the general obligation to preserve and protect the marine environment is incumbent on State parties by the Article 192 not only over each State party’s EEZ but also the whole marine areas. ITLOS, through its jurisprudence, developed the corpus of international environmental law specially relating to ocean, precautionary principle, obligation to protect, marine environment impact assessment, and due diligence obligation. It is vindicating that UNCLOS can take a normative role and create new rule set of principles to cope with marine biodiversity, climate change, and marine plastics.