The North-West Pacific Region Action Plan (NOWPAP) was drafted by UNEP as part of its Regional Seas Programme.¹² This Action Plan is designed for the Protection, Management and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment of the North-West Pacific Region. More specifically, this Regional Action Plan focuses on the wise use, development and management of the coastal and marine environment for the economic development of the countries in the region. While most of the projects under NOWPAP involve the protection of the environment from sea-based sources of pollution, the Action Plan also aims to establish special programmes to protect the marine and coastal biodiversity, and initiate programmes for sustainable development of living resources based on the ecosystem management approaches.¹³

　

 The Northwest Pacific Action Plan is administered by a Regional Coordinating Unit, which is co-hosted by Japan and Korea, and participated in by China and Russian. The Northwest Pacific Action Plan's Regional Coordinating Unit is the regional center that is responsible for the implementation of the different activities under the Action Plan. Though NOWPAP's operation faces many problems, this regional programme is considered "new with a much simpler institutional framework compared to those of COBSEA and SPREP, but it has expressly adopted the ecosystem-based management as a strategy in achieving sustainable development in the area."¹⁴

　

　

 Northeast Asia has traditionally been active in conservation and management of marine living resources. There are presently a dozen of bilateral fisheries agreements in force in the region. Most governments of the Northeast Asian Seas are involved in more than one fishing agreements with its coastal neighbors.

　

 With the improvement of overall regional political relations in recent years, another crop of fisheries agreements were signed and came into force between China and Japan, China and South Korea, and South Korea and Japan, respectively. A study of these fisheries agreements reveals that they share many commonalities, such as the establishment of a joint committee to make importance decisions on the major aspects of these bilateral fishing relations. Though there have been no coordinating agencies for these fisheries arrangements, they may nonetheless serve as a solid basis for developing a multilateral regime.

　

　

 To improve and enhance coastal and ocean stewardship as agreed in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in 1992, the International Conservation Union (IUCN) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States of America, have jointly lunched an action program of the Large Marine Ecosystems (LME) as an ecosystem-based management strategy. Large marine ecosystems are regions of oceans space encompassing coastal areas from river basins and estuaries to the seaward boundary of continental shelves and the seaward margins of coastal current systems.¹⁵ The are characterized by distinct bathymetry, hydrography, productivity, and tropically dependent aquatic populations. The advantage of this concept is that LME moves away from a highly focused and short-term management approach to a larger spatial scale and long-term management of ocean spaces and resources.

　

 In the Asia-Pacific region, several LMEs can be identified such as the East China Sea, Indonesian Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. The identification of such large marine ecosystems is only the first step to the adoption of the ecosystem-based management. The formulation of sound environmental policies and management measures at the national and regional levels and, more importantly, the establishment of governing institutions to implement such measures would be the next steps in LMEs management.

　

 After a quick excursion of the legal and institutional frameworks on marine environmental protection and management in the Northeast Asian Seas, the overall situation and its present state are not satisfactory and encouraging. The problems with the existing regimes may be many and the causes for them varied. This section attempts to look at some of major problems and their possible causes.

　

　

 One of the major finding of this study is that the countries bordering the Northeast Asian Seas have different, if not contrasting, priorities and perspectives, which in turn result in different attitudes and approaches to regional cooperation in environmental management.¹⁶

　

 China stresses that regional cooperation should focus on such urgent issues as industrial and marine pollution, and depletion of marine resources. The country traditionally prefers informal and bilateral mechanisms to official and multilateral regimes. It believes that the developed countries in the region and international organizations should contribute technical and financial assistance, and facilitates periodic meetings and exchange of relevant information and personnel in environmental management. These basic positions reflect the mere fact that China is still a developing country with a priority focus on industrialization and economic development.

　

 Japan insists that a regional forum must include economic ministries, rather than composed solely of officials from national environmental agencies. Any regional environmental cooperation programme must yield concrete projects focusing on monitoring the regional state of the environment and transfrontier marine pollutions, rather than becoming just another channel for its largesse. Japan does support the establishment of a center for implementation of multilateral cooperation. Russia clearly needs financial assistance in its environmental protection. It therefore prefers more practical and action-oriented regional environmental cooperation programs.¹⁷ South Korea advocates the necessity of regional cooperation for environmental protection, and supports a cooperation project to include both technical features as preferred by China and the survey of the environment state as preferred by Japan.¹⁸

　

 The differences in national priorities and perspectives may be said to be just reflections of the different levels of economic development of the countries concerned. They certainly explains some of the national reluctance to regional cooperation in marine environmental protection, but the real and inherent constraints to regional cooperation are perhaps the poor political relationships in the region and also the general lack of confidence among states in Northeast Asia.

　

　

 Another major finding is that the development of regional legislation on marine environmental protection and management is slow. For instance, the UNCLOS is by far the most comprehensive and important international legal instruments for the oceans and the marine environmental protection. But this treaty was not ratified by all the major regional maritime powers until it came into force in 1994. In the case of North Korea, the country is still not yet a party to the convention. When it comes to the issue of a regional seas convention. The record of the Northeast Asian Seas is even poor. As surveyed in the previous section, ten regional seas conventions have been developed since 1976 to cover most of the major marginal seas across the world. But the East Asian Seas in general and the Northeast Asian Seas in particular has not made a single step forward over a period of a quarter of a century. It is clear that Northeast Asia has left far behind by the international community in terms of adopting any multilateral convention, let alone a regional seas convention to protect the oceans and manage their resources.

　

　

 Institutional development in marine environmental protection and management in Northeast Asia seems to suffer from two major defects. On the one hand is the issue of institutional inadequacy. Three case studies in the Northeast Asia Seas may be cited to exemplify the problem. First, as stated, there are more than a dozen of bilateral fisheries agreements in operation in the Northeast Asia Seas. But there is no any agency to coordinate these agreements at the regional level.

　

 Second, the majority of the coastal countries bordering the Northeast Asia Seas are now parties to UNCLOS, Yet, there is to date no any regional effort to review and coordinate their obligations under the UNCLOS in terms of harmonizing national policies and legislation on marine environment and management of the semi-enclosed seas.

　

 Third, among the LMEs identified in the Asia-Pacific region, only the Gulf of Thailand, the Indonesian Sea and the Australian shelves are found to have governing institutions, due exclusively to the fact that they happen to be within the national jurisdiction of the individual states concerned. The LMEs of the East China Sea, Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan are characterized by a rapid economic development and overexploitation of the resources. The three countries of China, Japan, and Korea are behind the governance of the region and have done considerable investigation and studies on the pollution levels and state of fisheries in the area. However there is not a single institutional arrangement for ecosystem management in these semi-enclosed seas.

　

 There are no formal institutional mechanisms to cultivate and bring about international collaboration and cooperation in environmental research, monitoring, conservation and management activities. As a result, most monitoring and prevention programmes in the region can only be carried out on a individual state basis and these unilateral efforts may be ineffective, because they must stop at artificially determined political jurisdictions, rather than at a physical border. What is even worse is that the lack of a regional structure prevents the development of coordinated cooperation among states and the harmonization of national environmental policies as required under the UNCLOS.

　

 On the other end of the spectrum, there seems to be of a considerable redundancy of activities among the existing regimes. COBSEA and PEMSEA are perhaps the most well-established and comprehensive organizations responsible for marine environmental protection and management in the East Asian Seas. While COBSEA is in nature a regional scientific programme that involves the conduct of research on the prevention and control of marine pollution in the East Asian Seas, PEMSEA is a programme with concerns around the protection of the marine environment from land and sea-based sources of pollution in the same region. These two organizations overlap not only in their geographical scope of operation, but also in their membership coverage.

　

 The same problem of redundancy can be said to be true for PEMSEA and NOWPAP. The objectives of the PEMSEA seem to overlap those of the NOWPAP. The participation states of the former Program also include the members of NOWPAP such as China, North Korea. These programmes sometimes see each other as competitors and rivalries, rather than partners.

　

　

 There exists an insufficient understanding and knowledge about the ecosystems, biological process, interdependence of fish species and, more importantly, the impact of human's activities on the oceans and semi-enclosed seas systems. There is also a slow realization that regional cooperation can actually bring economic benefits for coastal states. Therefore, increasing awareness of the decision-makers and local communities and sharing scientific knowledge and information among the coastal communities on marine ecosystems becomes an indispensable task in terms of capacity building for effective management and protection of the marine environment. It can also serves as a motivation for the creation of a regional cooperative regime in Northeast Asia.

　

　

 Countries in Northeast Asian also subscribe to different international environmental conventions and apply inconsistent laws, policies, and measures related to marine environmental protection and management. Even some of the existing regional environmental regimes have embraced different measures related to integrated ocean management and ecosystem-based approach. For instance, COBSEA and NOWPAP's Coordinating Unit have adopted both the principle of integrated ocean management and the notion of ecosystem-based management approach. On the other hand, PEMSEA stresses the implementation of integrated coastal zone management, but has made no direct reference to the ecosystem management approach in its strategies.¹⁹

　

 North Korea represents another sort of the cooperational issues. It often participates in regional cooperative activities on a case-by-case basis for one reason or another. There is also a general lack of communication and confidence among states in the Northeast Asia region. These national difficulties and regional problems remain a weak link in the process towards regional cooperation.

　

 As surveyed, there has been an expansion and strengthening of marine environmental protection and management regimes worldwide over the last three decades. But the record of the East Asian Seas in general, and the Northeast Asian Seas in particular, has been poor in terms of joining or adhering to international conventions and developing a regional seas convention. Implementation of the national obligations on marine regional cooperation under UNCLOS is lagging well behind expectations in the region. Part of the problems arises from the different levels of economic development and different national priority and perspectives.

　

 In the East Asian region, regional cooperation programmes focus traditionally more on the South China Sea, and the Northeast Asian Seas seem to receive less attention. In this author's view, of all the problems of regional cooperation in marine environmental protection, the most fundamental challenges faced by the Northeast Asian Seas countries are the issue of institutional inadequacy. The lack of such an infrastructure prevented the internal development of well-coordinated cooperative programmes within the region, and failed in facilitating external involvement and assistance by relevant international organization.

　

 With the improvement of overall relations in the region, environmental development is steadily picking up speed in the region, as evidenced by an increasing number of multilateral discussions and various cooperation proposals for marine environmental protection. For instance, Mark J. Valencia from the East-West Center proposed the creation of a sea regime that should initially be consultative and of the self-help genre with each country managing its own waters, because of the tentative relations, competition, sensitivity regarding national jurisdiction, and mutual suspicions. He envisaged that this loose consultative mechanism could discuss common policies, cooperative research, education, and training. This consultative mechanism could also become the focal point for rationalizing the various international organization initiatives with a marine environmental focus. As confidence builds and a habit of consultative and cooperative behavior gains a foothold, a formal organization could be eventually established.²⁰ Valencia's writing may be considered as a more constructive cooperation proposal ever put forward for the Northeast Asian Seas. The beauty of this proposal lies in its pragmatism, thoughtfulness, and workability.

　

 Valencia's proposal may wish to be carried forward and made immediately operational by the following supplementary suggestions. The Southeast Asian Programme in Ocean Law, Policy and Management (SEAPOL),²¹ initiated a loose association in the form of a "Regional Forum for the Director of Marine Affairs Institutes in Southeast Asia". This regional forum, consisting of most marine affairs centers for Asia, had three meetings hosted respectively by the Thailand Institute for Marine Affairs (TIMA) in 2000, China Institute for Marine Affairs (CIMA) in 2001, and Korea Maritime Institute (KMI) in 2002. Since then the forum's operation was suspended, due partially to the dissolution of SEAPOL in 2001. It is suggested that Valencia's proposal be grafted onto this SEAPOL's regional forum, thus transforming the old forum into a new regional consultative mechanism (for not only the Northeast Asian Seas, but also the East Asian Seas as well).

　

 By so doing, the costs involved in establishing a new regional framework is minimized while the benefits of an existing forum can be fully used and maximized. The biggest advantage of this proposal is perhaps the effect that the envisaged consultative mechanism can start to work right away, rather than starting from scratch or postponed indefinitely. Of course, the ultimate goal for Northeast Asia is still the conclusion of a regional sea convention and the establishment of a regional center on management of the marine environment and the use of its resources.

　

 In this author's view, the marine environmental development in Northeast Asia is not compatible with the region's political strength and economic achievements. The seas of the region are clearly in need of a constructive approach to regional cooperation in the use of the ocean resources. We are confident that Northeast Asia is capable of turning their seas of isolation and distrust into a zone of cooperation and prosperity for its people in the future.