The Collaborative Innovation Centre for Territ orial Sovereignty and Maritime Rights (CICTSMR), the Research Institute of Environmental Law (RIEL), Wuhan University, China and the School of Law, Un iversity of New England, Australia are pleased to announce the call for pap ers for the “Conservation of Marine Living Resources in the Polar Regions: Science, Politics and Law” Conference.
The P olar Regions are ‘Final Frontiers’ (Freestone 2015) for human beings. While the world’s ocean is facing extreme pressure from anthropogenic activities , the Polar Regions are still relatively pristine. Nevertheless, marine eco systems in the Polar Regions are experiencing significant changes. There is an urgent need for an effective governance framework for marine living res ources in the Polar Region to avoid a ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ (Hardin 1968 ). On the other hand, there is hope that a well-developed governance struct ure in the Polar Regions could provide lessons for sustainable management o f marine living resources in other parts of the world.
Climate change and the need for the conservation of marine biod iversity have brought much attention to the Polar Regions. At the internati onal level, the United Nations General Assembly is working on the developme nt of an international legally-binding instrument under the Law of the Sea Convention for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological di versity of areas beyond national jurisdiction. At the same time, discussion s and debates concerning the establishment of marine protected areas in Ant arctica have been going on for years within the Commission for the Conserva tion of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). In the Arctic, two Meet ings on High Sea Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean were held in Washing ton D.C, United States. China, the European Union, Japan and the Republic o f Korea were all invited to engage within a broader process toward the prev ention of unregulated commercial fishing in the central Arctic Ocean.
Against this backdrop, the Conference would brin g together scholars from relevant disciplines such as international law, in ternational relations, political science and marine biology as well as NGOs , and representatives from governments and international organizations to d iscuss how to achieve effective conservation of marine living resources in the Polar Regions at the national, regional and international level. Intera ctions between science, politics and law are particularly examined. The Con ference also provides a unique opportunity for international scholars to di scuss China’s role in the Polar Regions with their Chinese peers.
Call for Abstracts
Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be emailed to Dr Nengye Liu(This email address is being protected f rom spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) by 15 September 2016. All abstracts will be peer -reviewed by an international panel of reviewers. Selected speakers will be notified by 15 November 2016. It is anticipated that an edited book of pap ers or a special issue of journal articles from the Conference would be pub lished in 2018.
Con firmed Speakers
Apart from Dr Nengye Liu and Professor Dr Tianbao Qin, who will be leading academic discussions , a number of speakers have confirmed their availability to speak at the Co nference. Confirmed speakers include: