Biodiversity Program Current Activities:
Marine Conservation

CIEL’s marine conservation work has focused on strengthening the legal framework for fisheries protection, particularly the formation of regional fisheries organizations and effective enforcement of their requirements. 

In 1999, CIEL prepared two white papers for WWF-US on key legal issues facing negotiators of a new fisheries agreement in the Central and Western Pacific, Effective Decision-Makingand Effective Dispute Resolution.  The papers reviewed precedent in international law as well as creative options for effectively designing and implementing regional fisheries management organizations and arrangements -- one of the top priorities in international conservation law today.

CIEL has also worked to enhance protection of marine and coastal biodiversity under the Biodiversity Convention.   In partnership with IUCN and WWF, CIEL published a 1996 report on legal and policy reforms, Biodiversity in the Seas: Implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity in Marine and Coastal Habitats. 

This report followed up on a campaign by CIEL and other groups that persuaded governments at the 1995 Conference of Parties of the Biodiversity Convention to adopt recommendations for marine and coastal conservation in the "Jakarta Mandate".

CIEL also published a summary of its findings in a 1996 CIEL Brief, Biodiversity in the Seas, also translated into Spanish.