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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.

Sec. Marine Pollution

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1681518

This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Marine Environmental Protection: Challenges, Solutions and Perspectives Volume IIView all 47 articles

A Strategy for Risk Control of Marine Pollution from Land-based Sources: Establishment of Multilateral Guarantee Mechanism

Provisionally accepted
  • Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Marine pollution from land-based sources (MPLBS) is currently one of the main sources of global marine pollution. The international community is facing a dilemma on regulating MPLBS: the lack of international rules makes it difficult to resort to international judicial institutes; while domestic laws have no extraterritorial jurisdiction. Along with developing and improving international legal regulatory system, the Multilateral Guarantee Mechanism (MGM) can be established for MPLBS combat. With its unique advantages, the MGM is beneficial for controlling MPLBS risk, supervising pollutant sources, and providing effective compensation for damages. Section 1 of this article starts with a brief introduction to the definition and features of MPLBS. With its wide scope not limited to the coastal waters, MPLBS could lead to serious harmful consequences to marine environment and it is difficult to trace the real sources of the pollutants. Section 2 analyzes the legal challenges faced by MPLBS combat and points out the necessity of constructing the risk control mechanism for MPLBS. The absence of a specific worldwide international treaty becomes one of the deficiencies for international legal norms regarding MPLBS control, while comparatively integrated domestic legal frameworks on MPLBS control only take effect within territories and jurisdictional waters of states. The establishment of risk prevention and control mechanism, which also aims to provide effective injury compensation is more practical and appropriate. Section 3 discusses the necessity, feasibility and advantages of the MGM for MPLBS risk control. The dilemma of MPLBS control constitutes necessity of establishing MGM, and commonalties between international investment risk control and MPLBS risk control show feasibility of MGM . The advantages of MGM help to balance national interests and collective environmental protection. Section 4 explores how the MGM functions for MPLBS risk control by referring a series of core contents, including fundamental convention, guarantee agency, types of risks, payment and subrogation, dispute settlement, etc. Section 5 illustrates the implementation of the MGM under two hypothetical scenarios: plastic pollution in the Philippines and Japanese radioactive wastewater pollution. Restrictions of the MGM and corresponding solutions are discussed. Section 6 concludes main arguments and makes an expectation on the MGM.

Keywords: Marine environmental protection, marine pollution, pollution risk control, Multilateral Guarantee Agency, realization of subrogation

Received: 07 Aug 2025; Accepted: 17 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 PAN. 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: XIAOLIN PAN, mavispanpan@163.com

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