ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Pollution
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1632601
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Marine Environmental Protection: Challenges, Solutions and Perspectives Volume IIView all 35 articles
Averting an oil spill disaster through legal measures and law implementations
Provisionally accepted
- 1Walailak University, Tha Sala District, Thailand
- 2Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China
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This paper aims to analyze the various legal perspectives towards the oil spills in the sea and ocean waters that directly or indirectly impact the Thai economy and communities. The methodology for this study employs a qualitative approach, collecting data from key informant interviews with respondents selected from the concerned ministries, departments, and other stakeholders involved in the oil spill disaster response, recovery, and policy implementations at the local, national, and international levels. This study relies on primary data such as international, national, and local legal acts, government five-year plans, announcements from relevant ministries, and published government reports, supplemented by secondary data from scholarly literature. The data analysis involves content analysis based upon the legal themes affecting Thailand's social, economic, and environmental setup, along with Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis. The findings reveal a lack of a legal framework for effective oil spill clean-up mechanisms and insufficient resources at all levels of oil spill disaster governance in Thailand. The strict top-to-bottom approach among three-tier cleaning procedures and over-dependence upon the eyewitness to report the incident results in the delay of oil spill response and recovery mechanisms. The laws are found to be lacking in protecting marine life and environmental flora and fauna. The originality of this paper has been enhanced in terms of international conventions, including MARPOL, a recent oil spill case study from Thailand, and current and improved data analysis.
Keywords: sustainability 1, Law and Regulatory Framework 2, Mass Communication 3, Disaster Response 4, UNCLOS5
Received: 16 Jun 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pathak, Laikram and Yaseen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shubham Pathak, Walailak University, Tha Sala District, Thailand
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