Three Structural Pillars of the Future International Legally Binding Instrument on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction

The Intergovernmental Conference on marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction has started its work on the development of an international legally binding instrument (ILBI) on the conservation and sustainable use of such biodiversity. The negotiations on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) will therefore further evolve within this new stage of the process. Based on a role-playing game conducted with students of the master’s in public international law at Utrecht University, this chapter looks at how the regulation for marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction could unfold by analysing three structural aspects of the development of the ILBI. First, as the ILBI is to be developed as an agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the first substantive section focuses on the relationship between the two treaties (Sect. 2). The next section looks at biodiversity itself, through the relationship between the Convention on Biological Diversity and the ILBI, notably on how the instruments could complement one another in areas beyond national jurisdiction (Sect. 3). Finally, the last substantive section assesses the character of the ILBI, to see whether institutional arrangements should be rooted in a global, region/sectoral and/or hybrid approach (Sect. 4). These three issues form, in our view, the three pillars of the structural development and practical significance of the ILBI.