{"title":"Recent developments in building sustainable marine fisheries in China: Reflections on the 2023 Revision of the Marine Environmental Protection Law","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106439","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As the ocean provides an environmental carrier for fisheries development, sustainable marine fisheries and marine environmental protection are highly synergistic and consistent. Facing traditional and emerging crises such as marine pollution, overfishing and climate change, China revised the Marine Environmental Protection Law in 2023. This article aims to evaluate whether the newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law effectively responds to crises of sustainable development in marine fisheries and how it contributes to sustainable marine fisheries. The study has found that the 2023 revision enriches and improves China’s legal regimes on marine fisheries from multiple aspects, covering marine environmental supervision, marine ecological protection and the prevention and control of land-based pollution, engineering construction projects pollution, waste dumping pollution, vessel pollution and legal responsibility. The newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law not only refines the institutional norms and intensifies the legal responsibilities of violations but also improves the systemic nature of the legislation, thus providing stronger legal guarantees for sustainable marine fisheries. However, there are also legislative shortcomings such as unclear connotations of the newly established legal regimes and insufficient response to overfishing and climate change. Nevertheless, China’s newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law applies the methodology of integrated ecosystem management and comprehensively utilized regulatory measures such as command-and-control tools, honor encouragement and economic incentives to enhance its regulatory effect, also providing implications and insights for addressing the challenges of sustainable marine fisheries on a global scale.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48427,"journal":{"name":"Marine Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Marine Policy","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X24004391","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
As the ocean provides an environmental carrier for fisheries development, sustainable marine fisheries and marine environmental protection are highly synergistic and consistent. Facing traditional and emerging crises such as marine pollution, overfishing and climate change, China revised the Marine Environmental Protection Law in 2023. This article aims to evaluate whether the newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law effectively responds to crises of sustainable development in marine fisheries and how it contributes to sustainable marine fisheries. The study has found that the 2023 revision enriches and improves China’s legal regimes on marine fisheries from multiple aspects, covering marine environmental supervision, marine ecological protection and the prevention and control of land-based pollution, engineering construction projects pollution, waste dumping pollution, vessel pollution and legal responsibility. The newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law not only refines the institutional norms and intensifies the legal responsibilities of violations but also improves the systemic nature of the legislation, thus providing stronger legal guarantees for sustainable marine fisheries. However, there are also legislative shortcomings such as unclear connotations of the newly established legal regimes and insufficient response to overfishing and climate change. Nevertheless, China’s newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law applies the methodology of integrated ecosystem management and comprehensively utilized regulatory measures such as command-and-control tools, honor encouragement and economic incentives to enhance its regulatory effect, also providing implications and insights for addressing the challenges of sustainable marine fisheries on a global scale.
期刊介绍:
Marine Policy is the leading journal of ocean policy studies. It offers researchers, analysts and policy makers a unique combination of analyses in the principal social science disciplines relevant to the formulation of marine policy. Major articles are contributed by specialists in marine affairs, including marine economists and marine resource managers, political scientists, marine scientists, international lawyers, geographers and anthropologists. Drawing on their expertise and research, the journal covers: international, regional and national marine policies; institutional arrangements for the management and regulation of marine activities, including fisheries and shipping; conflict resolution; marine pollution and environment; conservation and use of marine resources. Regular features of Marine Policy include research reports, conference reports and reports on current developments to keep readers up-to-date with the latest developments and research in ocean affairs.