Preface
XVII
thus the internal greatness of the International Maritime Organization
made possible the modification of the 1973/1978 International Conven-
tion for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) 24
times as
of May 2004
by using the imaginative methods of “tacit acceptance” for
adoption of amendments able to by-pass the time-consuming domestic
systems of ratification.
The International Court of Justice uses small sentences inviting to re-
flection on the nature of the obligation (of means or of result) to negoti-
ate. The well-known
dictum in the North Sea Continental Shelf Cases
that
“(the parties) are under an obligation so to conduct themselves that the
negotiations are meaningful, which will not be the case when either of
them insists upon its own position without contemplating any modifica-
tion of it” (
I.C.J. Reports 1969,
3 et seq., at 47) is still a good source of ref-
erence to that effect. And academia has introduced into the realm of the
negotiating process a series of sophisticated and fine distinctions based
on an enormous catalog of subject-matters and a differentiated panorama
for the States partners of the international community.
Building
consensus
is the primary task, but the operation depends on
what we mean by consensus. An old expert on procedural matters of the
international organization used to sarcastically define
consensus
as fol-
lows: it is an accord where a group of participants in the negotiation is
satisfied by a number of provisions laid down by the draft text, but does
not agree with some other provisions, while on the contrary a second
group of participants is delighted by the same provisions but hate others
that a third group is keen to keep in the text.
The present publication initiated by MEPIELAN, confirms that inter-
national environmental negotiation in a particular maritime area will be
better served when the negotiators are guided with a number of theoreti-
cal and practical tools developed by well-known specialists. These tools
cover both the difficult area of conflict resolution and the equally compli-
cated field of the law of the sea.
It is commendable that to this effect the contributions contained in
the present volume take into consideration most of the relevant factors:
they follow the rapidly changing screen of the overall international re-
