Conventions, Compliance, and Safety: Environmental Governance in South and Southeast Asia

Abstract

Across South and Southeast Asia—a vast maritime theater encompassing the Bay of Bengal, the South China Sea, and the archipelagic waters of Indonesia and the Philippines—the gap between international environmental law and on‑water practice is not merely technical but existential. While nearly all states in the region are parties to foundational instruments such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), MARPOL, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the Basel Convention, ratification has rarely translated into robust compliance. This article examines why. It argues that the region suffers from a tripartite governance deficit: fragmented domestic legal architectures that vest overlapping and often contradictory mandates in multiple agencies; chronic under‑enforcement rooted in scarce technical capacity, inadequate port reception facilities, and the absence of binding transboundary environmental impact assessment protocols; and a deeper political economy of corruption and regulatory capture, where environmental clearance is routinely treated as a negotiable commodity rather than a binding legal obligation.

Through comparative case studies—including ship‑breaking in Bangladesh and Pakistan, land‑based marine pollution in the Ganges‑Brahmaputra delta, illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing across the Andaman Sea, and coastal reclamation under China’s Belt and Road Initiative—the article traces how statutory environmental duties are systematically subordinated to commercial and geopolitical priorities. It finds that courts in the region, despite occasional progressive rulings (e.g., recognizing river legal personhood in Bangladesh or applying the writ of kalikasan in the Philippines), have yet to embrace core international principles such as the precautionary approach, the polluter‑pays principle, or strict liability for transboundary harm. Meanwhile, soft‑law regional frameworks—the Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem (BOBLME) programme, ASEAN’s Working Group on Coastal and Marine Environment—remain useful forums for dialogue but lack enforceable compliance mechanisms.

The article then advances a normative legal architecture for reform. It proposes that South and Southeast Asian states adopt a regional framework agreement on marine environmental compliance, anchored in four enforceable pillars: (1) mandatory, transparent, and transboundary environmental impact assessment with independent third‑party auditing; (2) harmonized domestic legislation that criminalizes the most egregious forms of marine pollution and IUU fishing with proportionate, dissuasive penalties; (3) a regional compliance commission empowered to receive complaints from affected coastal communities and to issue binding recommendations; and (4) a dedicated capacity‑building fund—financed in part by a levy on port and shipping revenues—to close the resource gap that currently renders environmental law a paper promise. Ultimately, this article concludes that without such a legally robust, regionally coordinated, and equitably enforced framework, the environmental governance of South and Southeast Asia will remain a tragedy of the commons: celebrated in international pledges, but systematically failed in the coastal waters where millions live, fish, and drown. Safety at sea and sustainability on the shore are not separate legal problems—they are a single, urgent, and still unmet challenge.