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Consensus or Not Consensus: That Is the CCAMLR Question
Citation
Turner, JR and Jabour, JA and Miller, DGM, Consensus or Not Consensus: That Is the CCAMLR Question, Ocean Yearbook, 22 pp. 117-158. ISSN 0191-8575 (2008) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2008 Brill
Official URL: http://www.brill.nl/
Abstract
Recent commentary has highlighted inconsistencies between international
legal concepts (norms and rules) and the capacity of States to adopt or
implement them.1 In some cases, the State legal systems in place are readily
able to accommodate the dynamic new norms that have evolved from rapid
changes in contemporary international values or policies (e.g., in respect of
torture, trade, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.). When this is not the case,
the obvious conclusion is that legal operating systems need to adapt, or
imbalances are likely to persist and new norms will not be given full effect.2
The Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living
Resources (CAMLR Convention)3 is a longstanding international agreement
that celebrated its 25th annual meeting in 2006. In this article, we
retrospectively analyze the Convention’s implementation by its administrative
Commission (CCAMLR) to evaluate the regime’s adaptability. The
article focuses on the key role that CCAMLR’s consensus-based decisionmaking
has played in relation to a recent qualification to past practice
arising from ‘‘consensus-minus-one’’ decisions. The overall effectiveness of
the regime is accordingly assessed.
Recognizing that consensus does not operate in a vacuum, we
hypothesize that CCAMLR’s management of Southern Ocean marine living resources comprises at least four essential elements: cooperation, compromise,
consensus, and compliance. To help explain how CCAMLR functions,
a particular methodological template is applied to these elements to
ascertain if it is possible to place them within either an operating or a
normative system or sometimes both. As Figure 1 shows, the elements are
essentially discrete, but linked; we emphasize this point by illustrating how
they interact.
Our study begins by exploring CCAMLR’s history and how cooperation
has been achieved even though the overriding interests of the States
involved encompass a commercially competitive activity (harvesting). Like
many international legal instruments, the Convention’s negotiation invariably
led to compromises. The Chairman’s Statement, appended to the
Convention, is itself a built-in compromise on the application of CCAMLR’s
jurisdiction.
Finally, we examine what is meant by ‘‘consensus’’: how it operates to
underpin compliance, and what the emerging notion of ‘‘consensus-minusone’’
implies. Our primary objective is to establish if the current CCAMLR
decision-making process actually improves compliance—a reasonable expectation
that indicates if the regime is working effectively.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
---|---|
Research Division: | Environmental Sciences |
Research Group: | Environmental management |
Research Field: | Environmental management |
Objective Division: | Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards |
Objective Group: | Understanding climate change |
Objective Field: | Climate change models |
UTAS Author: | Turner, JR (Mrs Jacquelyn Turner) |
UTAS Author: | Jabour, JA (Dr Julia Jabour) |
UTAS Author: | Miller, DGM (Dr Denzil Miller) |
ID Code: | 55249 |
Year Published: | 2008 |
Deposited By: | IASOS |
Deposited On: | 2009-03-10 |
Last Modified: | 2009-09-08 |
Downloads: | 11 View Download Statistics |
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