플라스틱 협약 초안과 해양환경오염 규제 - 유엔해양법협약의 적용 가능성과 2024년 국제해양법재판소의 기후변화 권고적 의견의 시사점을 중심으로

Plastic pollution, including marine plastic pollution, constitutes a quintessential transboundary environmental challenge requiring coordinated global action. In response, the United Nations Environment Assembly adopted Resolution 5/14 in 2022, initiating the development of a legally binding international instrument on plastic pollution, with specific reference to pollution affecting the marine environment. As of 2025, five sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) have been convened. This article examines the current status and structural features of the draft instrument, focusing on the Chair’s text dated 1 December 2024, and explores the potential for international legal responses to marine plastic pollution. The draft instrument incorporates key structural elements characteristic of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), such as flexibility, differential treatment between developed and developing countries, consideration of non-state actors, and phased implementation mechanisms. While the instrument prohibits formal reservations, it introduces procedural and substantive flexibility through mechanisms such as annex adoption, notification of non-acceptance, and opt-in clauses. Furthermore, a multi-layered compliance mechanism based on a managerial model is introduced, involving voluntary reporting, information sharing, the Conference of the Parties (COP), and a non-adversarial committee on compliance. Despite these developments, regulation of marine plastic pollution remains peripheral in the draft instrument, with limited references to the marine environment scattered across a few provisions. Given the instrument’s broader orientation toward regulating the full life cycle of plastics, it is structurally constrained in providing comprehensive and detailed norms specifically targeting marine environmental pollution. Accordingly, this article argues for the complementary application of existing international legal frameworks-most notably, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Drawing on the 2024 advisory opinion of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which adopted an evolutive interpretation of marine environmental pollution and States’ due diligence obligations under Article 194 of UNCLOS, the article contends that plastic pollution falls within the scope of “pollution of the marine environment” as defined in Article 1(4). This legal interpretation enables the application of Part XII of UNCLOS concerning the protection and preservation of the marine environment to issues of plastic pollution, thereby reinforcing the normative response to this pressing global threat.