Role of Private Entities and Non-Governmental Organisations in Ocean Governance: Remarks on the Baltic Sea Perspective

The European Commission, continuing its efforts to contribute to the integrated governance of global oceans, promotes harmonization of respective regimes in its Member States. In its assessment of this process in 2019, the Commission stressed in its joint report to the European Parliament and the Council that healthy oceans can exist only if responsibility for this dynamic natural ecosystem is shared not only between states, but also between different kinds of cross-border operating actors and stakeholders. The dynamics of the marine environment shall be reflected in an elastic legal regime based not only on classic legal instruments like conventions and their national implementations, but also on different kinds of soft laws, standards and formal specifications created by representatives of these stakeholders. However, admitting that integrated governance is the long-term goal, the European Union also accepts solutions based on a sectoral approach, as long as they effectively fulfill the duty to protect the marine environment enabling use of the sea for mankind and economical use of the ocean. Such a comprehensive view on the ocean is also the background of the UNCLOS co-operation. Integrated ocean governance and its mechanisms must then be created and developed by very diverse organisations and institutions, from classical international organizations, through to intergovernmental cooperations at different levels and private organizations. This article summarizes the achievements of practical cooperation of EU mechanisms of ocean governance with non-governmental private organisations, representing the de facto decentralised management of the world oceans. Extended analysis will reveal how climate change is becoming a major long-term driver of ecosystems, bringing together different actors in an integrated, ecosystem-based oceans management approach which highlights the interplay between environmental and economic conditions, and legal mechanisms and their reflections in documents prepared by private organisations.