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

Interest-Based Regime Analysis 105
The London Conference
Representatives from 92 states met in London between October 30 and
November 13, 1972. 40 Momentum for an ocean dumping convention was
building. The Stockholm conference had generated significant interest, and
socialist and developing countries were better represented than at earlier
meetings. The British Secretary of State for the Environment, opening “The
Inter-governmental Conference on the Convention on Dumping of Wastes
at Sea,” urged the negotiators to reach agreement on the convention, which
would be “the first tangible fruit of Stockholm” (“Conference Meets on
Dumping of Waste at Sea,” Nature 240 (November 3, 1972), p. 4).
The final version of article 1 said: “Contracting Parties shall individually
and collectively promote the effective control of all sources of pollution of
the marine environment, and pledge themselves especially to take all practicable
steps to prevent the pollution of the sea by the dumping of waste
and other matter that is liable to create hazards to human health, to harm
living resources and marine life, to damage amenities or to interfere with
other legitimate uses of the sea.” The content of this article should be seen
in the light of article 2: “Contracting Parties shall take effective measures
individually, according to their scientific, technical and economic capabilities,
and collectively, to prevent marine pollution caused by dumping and
shall harmonize their policies in this regard.”
Thus, beginning in Reykjavik, the general provisions took an even less
prohibitory and restrictive stance: states should “promote the effective control”
(a less binding formulation) “of all sources of pollution of the marine
environment,” taking “all practicable steps” to tackle pollution of the sea
by dumping. In short, concrete measures should be taken only with respect
to ocean dumping. Furthermore, “practicable steps,” an elaboration of the
phrase “according to their capability” from Reykjavik, implied that regulatory
efforts of states would be based on individual technical possibilities
and on other factors, especially economic capabilities (memo, Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, Denmark, December 6, 1972, p. 5). 41 Similarly, article 2,
which also had been redrafted several times during the negotiations, had
a new modifier: “according to their scientific, technical and economic
capabilities.” Developing countries had proposed and strongly supported
the phrases “to take all practicable steps” and “according to their scientific,
technical and economic capabilities.” Instead of setting uniform
global pollution standards, their intention was to lessen the burden of