This dissertation uses ¡§marine good governance¡¨ as the core to discuss the establishment of marine protected areas institutions in Taiwan. As a marine nation, it is a fatal key whether Taiwan can properly manage marine resources or not. Appropriately dealing with marine-related affairs can bring success to overall national development. The marine environmental diversity makes its affairs much more complicated than the land area. The global cognition of marine management has greatly changed. ¡§The concept of public management¡¨ has shifted from ¡§government¡¨ to ¡§governance¡¨. Good governance is the aim of public management nowadays. A marine nation should aim to have good marine governance. Establishing integrated marine institutions would be the key point. Although the quantity of Taiwan¡¦s marine protected areas has greatly increased, the effectiveness of management on marine protected areas is still called into question. This dissertation recommends that Taiwan should focus on integrating the institutions on marine protected areas. The future Marine Affair Organization and the corresponding marine governance legal structure would result in a ¡§Good Governance of a Marine Nation¡¨.

This dissertation evaluates the role and effectiveness of law in the transboundary environmental governance of the Baltic Sea with regard to eutrophication. To this end, it reviews the applicable international agreements with their related instruments, as well as the EU legal frameworks, for the protection of the Baltic Sea environment on the basis of theories on resilience in social-ecological systems. The scientific discourse on resilience in social-ecological systems provides theories on effective governance of complex environmental problems with nonlinear causal connections. The governance features identified in resilience governance also show significant similarities with characteristic features of the concept of ecosystem approach. The resilience features can thus provide guidance to the operationalization of this concept, which lacks a distinct meaning in the legal context. Eutrophication is one of the main environmental problems in the Baltic Sea. Despite the fact that this problem has been acknowledged since the 1970s, only little progress has been visible in the attempts to limit the problem. Environmental governance in the form of cooperation and common action has, however, been established by the coastal states of the Baltic Sea to reduce the discharges to their common resource. This was originally coordinated through the Helsinki Convention and its administrative organization HELCOM in the 1970s. Since the year 2000 a new set of legal instruments and approaches have developed, emphasizing also the ecosystem approach. These instruments have a basis both in HELCOM and in EU environmental law, most significantly represented by the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. They establish a unique regulatory structure, with new approaches to regulation, which also give rise to questions regarding interpretation and effectiveness that have not previously been analyzed. It is concluded that applicable law in the Baltic Sea area reflects resilience features such as adaptability, flexibility and redundancy within the legal structure. The legal structure for the Baltic Sea is dynamic and stretches over many levels of governance. The applicable legal instruments are constructed so as to be adaptable and flexible. The legal instruments moreover include significant elements that provide for participation at different levels and in different forms, which contribute to enabling the mentioned resilience features. However, the Baltic Sea legal structure – as law in general – has different core functions than just providing for effective environmental governance. Law is based in a number of general principles connected to the rule of law and the function of law as a foundation for stability in the society and in human interactions. These principles are also important since they are directly linked to enforcement, monitoring and control. While the legal structure in the Baltic Sea may provide for effective governance and social-ecological resilience, the resilience features reflected in law do not always appear as far-reaching as suggested by resilience theories, much due to the legal principles. It is however because of these principles and the base for binding requirements they enable, that law can push for governance measures and features that might not have been accomplished otherwise. This, in the larger perspective, includes creating requirements that steer human activities away from critical thresholds. / Baltic Ecosystem Adaptive Management, BEAM

With the majority of the oceans lying outside the borders of national jurisdiction, it is not easy to preserve them healthy and secure as the ‘shared responsibility’ is not recognized unambiguously in the global world. The recent turn to the maritime sphere is visible in the UN 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development that has been widely advocated by the EU. The latter’s commitment to sustainable ocean governance involves action beyond borders, which has a considerable impact on the global maritime sphere as well as on developing countries depending on the seas. On the one hand, the EU’s pursuit of sustainable ocean governance is informed by the norms and values that the organization possesses and tries to promote in its response to global challenges. On the other, the normative principles and the EU’s flowery rhetoric serve as a mean to rationalize Union’s pursuit of self-interest. This study analyses both dimensions of the organization’s engagement in the maritime sphere, considering oceans as a ‘placeful’ environment that has to be treated in the same way as the land is. By exploring the external dimension of EU’s action in the field, the thesis allows to see that EU’s pursuit of sustainable ocean governance has to be understood as a process in which the strategic aims are imbued with genuine moral concerns. Nevertheless, those can sometimes be undermined by the material policy outcomes visible in the West African coastal states such as Mauritania and Senegal.

Global Ocean Governance (GOG) är till för att styra och organisera aktörers nyttjande av havens resurser som inte täcks av nationell lagstiftning på ett hållbart sätt. Men efter årtionden av staters förbiseende av regimen för ett hållbart nyttjande som främst FNs Generalförsamling (UNGA) ämnat skapa, har regimen inte fungerat. Även om stater rationellt skulle gynnas av att samarbeta för ett hållbart nyttjande av havens resurser genom ett moratorium av bottentrålfiske i internationellt vatten, har detta inte skett. Det är alltså tydligt att regimen inte fungerar. Frågan är varför - det vill säga hur regimen brister i att säkerställa ett hållbart nyttjande av havens resurser. För att ta reda på hur regimen brister krävs en undersökning av regimens (in)effektivitet.Det finns ingen konsensus mellan regimteoretiker av vad som utgör en (in)effektiv regim och hur en regims effektivitet kan mätas. Denna studies huvudsakliga bidrag till den vetenskapliga forskningen är att bidra med information om vad som utgör en effektiv respektive ineffektiv regim. Denna studies syfte är inte att ta reda på denna fråga, men att genom analysen om hur regimen av ett moratorium av bottentrålfiske i internationellt vatten brister, bidra till den vetenskapliga forskningen utifrån teorikonsumtion.Genom Greenes (1996) kriterier för vad som utgör en (in)effektiv regim har jag undersökt hur regimen, dess skapande institutioner samt regimens omgivning, brister. Ett viktigt resultat av min analys är att UNGA brister på grund av sin försiktighet att styra staters beteende genom en global regim, det vill säga betoningen av dess resolutioner i frågan om ett moratorium mot bottentrålfiske i internationellt vatten är bristfälliga. / The main task of Global Ocean Governance (GOG) is to govern and organize actor’s exploitation of the resources that the seas that are not covered by national jurisdiction provide, in a sustainable manner. But after decades of state’s ignorance towards theregime on a sustainable use of the resources of the seas that the United Nation’s General Assembly (UNGA) has been aiming to create, the regime has shown to be dysfunctional.Even if states would benefit rationally from cooperation for a sustainable use of the resources that the seas provide through a moratorium on bottom trawling of the high seas, such cooperation is not in place. It is clear that the regime is dysfunctional. The question is why – that is, in what way the regime is insufficient in providing a sustainable use of the resources of the high seas. In order to analyse why the regime is flawed, an evaluation of the regime’s (in)efficiency is required.There is no consensus among regime theorists of what makes an (in)effective regime and how a regime’s effectiveness can be measured. The main scientific contribution of this study is to contribute with information on what criteria makes an effective or an ineffective regime. The purpose of this study is not to examine this question per se, but to, through the analysis of how the regime on a moratorium of bottom trawling in the high seas is lacking, provide to the scientific regime discussion through theory consumption.Through Greene’s (1996) criteria on what makes a regime (in)effective, I have analysed how the regime, it’s creator’s, and the surroundings of the regime, fails. A key- finding of my analysis is that UNGA fails because of its caution to steer state’s behaviour through a regime, that is, the stress of its resolutions for a moratorium on bottom trawling in the high seas are lacking.

The once pristine and rich marine environment of the South China Sea is degrading at an alarming rate due to the rapid socioeconomic development of the region. Despite this, and because mainly of complicated sovereignty and maritime boundary disputes, coastal States have not been able to develop effective regional cooperation to safeguard the shared marine environment. This dissertation, “Towards a Network of Marine Protected Areas in the South China Sea: Legal and Political Perspectives”, researches legal and political measures to support the development of a network of marine protected areas in the South China Sea. Such a network, if properly developed, would not only help to protect the marine environment and resources of the region but also contribute to lower the tension among its coastal States. These measures should be developed in accordance with international law, based on the specific geopolitical context of the South China Sea region and take into consideration experiences in developing regional networks of marine protected areas from other marine regions. Consequently, three optional categories of measures for the development of a network of marine protected areas in the South China Sea are suggested at the end. They include national-focused measures; measures to enhance the regional cooperation; and measures to build a regime for marine protected areas and network of marine protected areas in the South China Sea. These measures could be taken alternatively or on a step-by-step basis.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Ocean Governance in South Africa has gained momentum over the last decade with the publication of the Green and White Papers on the National Environmental Management of the Ocean in 2012 and 2014, and the promulgation of the Marine Spatial Planning Act in 2019. Parallel to this South Africa developed and implemented the Operation Phakisa Ocean Economy Development Programme and declared a network of twenty Marine Protected Areas. The timing of this study over the last five years allowed the opportunity to undertake a detailed study of the Ocean Governance Policy Development and Implementation as the formulation of the policy and its early implementation unfolded. The Study is primarily based on interpretation of the Green and White Papers as the primary and directed ocean governance policies produced by the Government of South African and the National Department of Environmental Affairs. It places these most recent specific ocean environmental policies in the context of the many other environmental policies that exits in the country.