Legal Predicament And Countermeasures Of China's Implementation Of The Ballast Water Management Convention

The ballast water from international ships is one of the most common ways to cause the invasion of alien species.When ships transport goods from one port to another and extract local water as ballast,they unwittingly transport alien species.Once alien species invade a new environment,they will bring great damage to the local ecological environment,society and economy.The Ballast Water Management Convention,which aims to prevent,reduce and ultimately eliminate the transfer of harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens by controlling and managing ballast water and sediment on ships,has come into force in China since January 22,2019.The article starts with the damage of ballast water to marine ecological environment,and indicates that it is of great significance for China to join the Ballast Water Management Convention.Based on the legislative status quo of ballast water in our country,this paper analyzes the legal dilemma of implementing the Ballast Water Management Convention in our country.The article analyzes the causes of the problem from three aspects:the legal system,the basic systems,and the regulatory enforcement regime.At the same time,through the discussion and research on the foreign legislation related to ballast water control and management,we can get inspiration from China's legislation and propose countermeasures to improve ships' ballast water control and management in order to promote the full implementation of the Ballast Water Management Convention in China,so as to promote the full implementation of the Ballast Water Management Convention in China.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,this paper is divided into four parts.The first chapter is mainly an overview of ship's ballast water and the Ballast Water Management Convention.This paper introduces the characteristics of ship's ballast water,and the damage to marine ecological environment,society and economy caused by alien species invasion brought by it.This article introduces the main contents of the Ballast Water Management Convention from the aspects of flag state supervision and port state supervision,and discusses the positive impact of China's accession to the convention.The second chapter aiming at the problems in China's legal system of ballast water control and management,finds that the main problems are mainly the lack of coordination within the legal system,the Measures for the Supervision and Management of Ship's Ballast Water and Sediment Management(trial)having a low legislative level,and unclear ways to incorporate conventions.After a comparative study of the relevant legislation in the United States,Canada and Australia,the article supplies that China should proceed to build a complete legal system for ballast water control and management in the following aspects:first,to revise the current legislation in combination with special legislation;Second,to locate the separate statutory of ballast water control and management at the level of administrative regulations;Third,to combine amendments to existing legislation with enacting special legislation.The third chapter studies the problems of the basic systems of ballast water control and management in China,the current basic systems of ballast water control and management in China is relatively backward in legislation,and derail from the requirements of the Ballast Water Management Convention,including the upper laws are lack of the prevention and control of alien species invasion caused by ballast water,the review system of the ballast water control and management plan is not complete,the inspection and certification systems are lacking,and the legal liability system is incomplete.Therefore,the article suggests that the contents of prevention and control of alien species invasion should be included in the upper laws of ballast water control and management,and the review system of the ballast water control and management plan,the inspection and certification system and the legal liability system should be constructed.Chapter four,aiming at the regulatory enforcement regime of ship's ballast water in China,holds that there are two problems in the current regulatory enforcement regime of China's implementation of the Ballast Water Management Convention,that is,the ambiguity of the competent authority and the lack of cooperation between relevant law enforcement agencies.It is easy to intensify contradictions between control and management departments,resulting in inefficient control and management power operation,which is unfavorable to the good implementation of the convention.In response to the above issues,the article proposes to explicitly authorize the Maritime Bureau of the Ministry of Transport as the competent authority to implement the convention through legal provisions,other agencies to cooperate in respective areas,and to establish a collaborative organization between ballast water supervision and administration agencies in the form of legislation to establish effective coordination mechanism.