The United Kingdom has become the first State to formally accept the 2013 marine geoengineering amendments to the 1996 London Protocol, which prohibits all dumping at sea apart from waste.
Marine geoengineering is defined as “a deliberate intervention in the marine environment to manipulate natural processes, including to counteract anthropogenic climate change and/or its impacts, and that has the potential to result in deleterious effects, especially where those effects may be widespread, long-lasting or severe”.
The amendments indicate that specific marine geoengineering activities are only permitted when the activity is assessed as constituting legitimate scientific research. At the current time, only ocean fertilisation for research purposes may be permitted.
At the moment, GESAMP (Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection) is undertaking a comprehensive study on marine geoengineering to better understand the potential impacts of proposed marine geoengineering techniques on the marine environment. This includes both the social and economic consequences.
Mr. Alan Beckwith, from the Treaty Section of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth office handed over the instrument of acceptance of the amendment at International Maritime Organization (IMO) Headquarters in London on June 24 and was welcomed by IMO Directors Frederick Kenney from the Legal and External Relations Division and Stefan Micallef from the Marine Environment Division.
These latest amendments are part of a series of efforts to address climate change. In 2006 some amendments were made to provide a global regulatory framework to regulate carbon capture and sequestration in sub-sea geological formations for permanent isolation, which have since entered into force for all Parties and created a legal basis in international environmental law for this purpose.
Image source: IMO
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