Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

104 Chapter 6
The issue of marine pollution control attracted considerable attention at
this conference (June 5–12, 1972). According to the British scientific journal
Nature, this issue was “every delegation’s favorite cause,” and the chief
delegates of Britain and the United States urged action on ocean dumping
(“Politics, Bureaucracy and the Environment,” Nature 237 (June 16, 1972),
p. 364). The draft convention and general marine pollution principles were
dealt with by Committee III (Pollution and Organizational Matters), but
the draft convention on ocean dumping was not a subject of any substantial
negotiation. It was evident that several countries wanted more time to
study the draft, and that no international agreement would be signed into
international law.
But marine pollution was addressed on a more general level. One principle
of the Human Environment Declaration from the conference and eight
detailed recommendations of the Stockholm Action Plan dealt specifically
with marine pollution. The recommendation on ocean dumping urged
immediate action: “Refer the draft articles and annexes contained in the
report of the inter-governmental meetings at Reykjavik, Iceland, in April
1972 and in London in May 1972 . . . to a conference of Governments to
be convened by the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland in consultation with the Secretary-General of the
United Nations before November 1972 for further consideration, with a
view to opening the proposed convention for signature at a place to be
decided by that Conference, preferably before the end of 1972.” (recommendation
86 (d) of the Stockholm Conference Action Plan as approved
by the United Nations General Assembly, reprinted on p. 174 of Rowland
1973) Governments clearly felt pressure to demonstrate willingness to act.
“For all their differences,” one commentator noted in the New York Times,
“114 countries felt it necessary to show concern for the environment. They
agreed on a large number of recommendations, such as an end to whaling
and the regulation of ocean dumping, that are useful if not binding. They
began the creation of new international machinery.” (Lewis 1972) 38
Substantial negotiations would take place at the London Conference. Only
a few concrete comments were made on the draft convention when the UN’s
Seabed Committee met in Geneva shortly after the Stockholm conference.
Nonetheless, developing countries repeated that they were vehemently
opposed to global pollution control standards. 39