درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Environmental risks and conflicts in the framework of the relations between countries and subsequently their role-playing in interaction and collaboration or conflicts and struggles between political actors especially in the level of states have reproduced serious discussions and disputes on the environment, security, and power which are interpreted as environmental geopolitics or ecopolitics by modern political geography. Geographically, the Persian Gulf is a semi-enclosed sea that has a very low capacity of self-dredging in comparison to that of high seas; hence, it retains the pollutants for longer periods of time. Some of its environmental problems arise from the various activities of the people residing along the northern and southern shores. If the situation is exacerbated by the factors such as oil and its subsequent pollutions, militarism and its subsequent destruction, desalination of seawater, and the construction of artificial islands, one can conclude that regional convergence between the countries neighboring this body of water in the process of bioregionalism would be of an essential necessity. According to the research findings, states acting in the geopolitical region of the Persian Gulf to produce power, security and to sustain them, from one hand, and to protect this shared aquatic ecosystem in the event of sustainable development, from the other hand, should mobilize all collective cooperations and operationalize the bioregionalism in regional and supranational scales.

The concerns of the international community regarding the potential environmental crisis for future generations have being increased arising out of the intensification of the challenges and threats to the marine environment as well as diminution of the biological resources as a result of the aggregation of harmful human activities over the maritime zones. At the same time, conservation, sustainable use and governance of the oceans through the application of the rule of law is one of the most important issues that have been at the forefront of the international community's endeavor dealing with law of the sea and ocean affairs. The United Nations General Assembly in order to resolve the challenges of the existing legal framework governing marine biodiversity has established a legally binding instrument for conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction known as the BBNJ process within the framework of the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The present paper, while considering the basic foundations of the existing international legal framework applicable to marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, describes the strengths and weaknesses of the current legal framework in order to improve the ongoing international legally binding instrument concerning BBNJ and will pursue the monitoring of the ongoing process from international law perspectives.