Law, Policy & Ocean Governance

The Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law is a community of accomplished legal experts spanning a wide breadth of contemporary international law themes. 

Edinburgh Law School has been at the heart of legal education and research for more than 300 years and its staff and students are actively engaged in ocean relevant research at both local and global levels. Current research areas include:

• International legal frameworks for the protection of the marine environment. 
• Contemporary challenges for the governance of marine protected areas in Scotland. 
• International, regional, and national fisheries governance.
• The development of the law of the sea by international courts and tribunals. 
• The rights and obligations of coastal states in disputed maritime areas.
• The development and implementation of international shipping standards.

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While ocean legal research is predominantly carried out at our Law School, policy and governance research cross-cuts all of our Colleges. For example, in the School of GeoSciences, the Changing Oceans Group is researching the science-policy interface to contribute to informed decision-making:

• Contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel for the Climate Change Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere.
• Research on the implementation of the European Union’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
• Investigating the role of science within international biodiversity governance processes. 

Apart from researching policy and governance, the University of Edinburgh’s marine and ocean research community is engaging with many current issues, in order to understand and discover solutions to complex environmental problems.

At the national level, the Scottish Government hosted its first International Marine Conference in February 2019 and continues to develop strategic partnerships with partners in the Arctic Circle (an area in which Edinburgh has significant research strengths). 

At an international level, through the Horizon 2020 funded ATLAS and iAtlantic projects, Edinburgh researchers have attended the negotiations for a new international legally binding instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ), and have been feeding marine scientific research into the policy sphere through official UN side-events, policy briefs, and stakeholder engagement workshops.