Maritime Organizations: History, Jurisdiction, and Global Regulation

The term “Maritime organizations” is a broad one that refers to those formal and informal groups that have been created for purposes of navigation or commerce on the sea. Oceans and navigable waters have long been a frontier for exploration and have served as important avenues for transportation and cross-cultural exchange. As trade has increased along with the Earth’s population, the regulation of these valuable thoroughfares has become more complex. However, what lies at the heart of all maritime organizations is the question of jurisdiction: who can regulate what and where.

HISTORY: FROM CITY-STATE REGIMES TO “FREEDOM OF THE SEAS”. Although there is evidence of some maritime organizations prior to the Roman Empire, the first real instances of a sea regime arose from claims to the Adriatic Sea by powers such as Venice. This trend spread throughout medieval Europe as city-states taxed ships that passed through their waters. As small city-states fell in power and larger empires grew in size, the complexity of maritime jurisdiction increased. For example, in 1494, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, dividing the seas in two, prompting a monopoly of commerce and navigation routes by these two kingdoms, and a corresponding pushback from other kingdoms supporting piracy and the institution of the maritime prize.

Following the capture of the Santa Catarina, a Portuguese vessel brought back as a prize to the Dutch court in 1608, a young lawyer named Hugo Grotius was asked to deliver his opinion on the justification of the capture. His opinion is widely considered the foundation of international ocean law, or the law of the sea. Stemming from Grotius’s decision, debate on how the seas should be regulated persisted throughout the mid-seventeenth century, the core of which centered on the balance between the freedom of the seas and the power of coastal states to manage their own waters. The debate was resolved in favor of the “freedom of the seas” concept, which asserts that national rights are limited to three miles from the coastline (or a “cannon shot” as it was commonly considered); everything else is international waters—open to all nations but belonging to none. The “freedom of the seas” was considered the Law of the Sea until the early twentieth century, when many nations began to express an interest in expanding their jurisdictions in order to exploit mineral reserves, protect fish stocks, and institute pollution controls.

MODERN ERA: INTERNATIONAL MARITIME ORGANIZATIONS. Despite changes among individual states with regard to maritime authority, it was not until the United Nations held its first Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1956 that formal international agreements on maritime rights and access were created and enforced unilaterally. The majority of these agreements have established zones of jurisdiction for coastal states and international waters, and created international maritime regulatory agencies. The primary agencies are the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Whaling Commission (IWC), and the International Seabed Authority (ISA)— all of which play influential roles in managing and maintaining the Law of the Sea.

The largest and most influential is the IMO (or the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization [IMCO], as it was originally named until 1982), which is a specialized agency within the UN that focuses on regulating shipping. Throughout the twentieth century, there had been several attempts to create international regulations on shipping. And when the IMCO was formed in 1959, multiple instruments and conventions were incorporated into it, including the Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS), which was passed in 1914 following the sinking of the Titanic, and the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil (OILPOL) in 1954. Building on these precedents, the IMCO developed and has maintained a focus on maritime safety and oil pollution. However, following the Torrey Canyon oil spill in 1967, when 120,000 tons of crude oil spilled into the English Channel, the IMCO was forced to reevaluate the effectiveness of its oil pollution regulations. The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) in 1973 and its corresponding protocol in 1978 are widely considered among the most important international marine conventions and were designed to minimize pollution from oil, emissions, and other harmful substances such as sewage.

Maritime organizations, including the IMO, IWC, and ISA, have played important roles in other key issues, including offshore mineral rights and the spread of invasive species through ballast water; however, whaling has proven to be one of the most controversial issues. The IWC, like the IMO and ISA, was formed after the Second World War with the support of the UN, but it remains a separate entity. The IWC is a voluntary organization. In 1982, it issued a moratorium on commercial whaling, which several nation-states, including Japan, Russia, Iceland, and Norway, opposed—these states issue their own quotas and manage whaling individually. Under the IWC, aboriginal communities are allowed whaling for sustenance and cultural practices. The anti-whaling movement has continued to grow since the mid-1970s, and commercial whaling remains a hotly debated topic that has drawn the involvement of nongovernmental environmental organizations such as Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace.

As the interest and capacity to mine deep-sea reserves increased, the UNCLOS established the ISA in 1994, the newest major international maritime organization. The main focus of the ISA is to facilitate the scientific and technological advancement of mining seabed reserves that fall beyond the purview of nation-states; the funding of these endeavors comes from the ISA Endowment Fund. Currently, there is interest in exploiting seabed reserves in the Arctic Ocean and areas in the South Pacific; however, there is skepticism regarding profitability and technological feasibility.

FURTHER READING: Anand, Ram Prakash. 1983. Origin and Development of the Law of the Sea. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Johnson, Lindy. 2004. Coastal State Regulation of International Shipping. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications.

Rothwell, Donald and Tim Stephens. 2010. The International Law of the Sea. Portland, OR: Hart Publishing.