This chapter will focus on the institutional aspects of fisheries and biodiversity in the Indian Ocean. It is intended to provide a background to the more specialist discussions that follow in later chapters. It is proposed to deal, first, though only very briefly, with the international legal background to the modern fisheries regime, and its slow recognition of the importance of biodiversity. Unfortunately, many of the provisions in the modern law of the sea that concern fisheries and marine biodiversity are still being implemented only in a piecemeal way.

THE MODERN LEGAL BACKGROUND

The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (hereafter referred to as the 1982 U.N. Convention) as we know was very short on high seas fisheries issues and biodiversity. The high seas fisheries provisions were so sparse that they had to be supplemented by another Agreement thirteen years later. The closest that the 1982 U.N. Convention came to addressing biodiversity was in the preamble where it called for the “conservation” of marine living resources, as well as the recognition that “the problems of ocean space are interrelated and need to be considered as a whole”. In the substantive articles, Article 61, when dealing with conservation, merely said:

This was backed up by a general obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment set out in Part XII of the 1982 U.N. Convention. However, these provisions did not add up to a substantial contribution or commitment regarding biodiversity.

The principal contribution of the 1982 U.N. Convention was to introduce the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) regime that to a large extent settled the controversy over the legal character of the EEZ.