The Barcelona Convention and Its Role in Oil Pollution Prevention in the Mediterranean Sea

An oil spill, whether via dumping from ships and aircraft, from operational or accidental discharge, from land-based sources, or whether from offshore com-mercial activities, is an event that has been portrayed by both academics and environmental specialists as a form of “disaster” that causes irreparable damage to the marine environment. The Mediterranean region, like other regions of the globe, is considered to have unique marine features that make the region particu-larly vulnerable to oil pollution, and hence, there is a dire need for a framework that can assist the coastal states to combine their efforts when trying to prevent, abate, combat and eliminate all potential and actual threats from oil pollution. With the burgeoning concern regarding pollution caused by oil and generic sub-stances, the Barcelona Convention and its Protocols appears as a legislative “soft law” tool that has the full potential, if implemented at the national level, to tackle oil pollution from all potential sources. There is a certain cadence in the way the Barcelona Convention and its Protocols have emerged over time, inevi-tably forming the most appropriate basis for the coastal states of the Mediterra-nean Sea Area to take actions from a platform that can be labelled as “collabo-rative”. As such, the Barcelona Convention and the Protocols relevant to oil pol-lution speaks to those states as beginning with the notion that efforts to deal with oil pollution needs to be combined. They also prescribe how those states can lim-it and intervene promptly. This prescription is also coupled with a form of recog-nition that there ought to be a consistent approach when dealing with an element that has a diametric personality, i.e., advantageous when used for operational purposes, and disadvantageous when there is a spill. This chapter provides an overview of the Barcelona Convention, and proceeds with an incisive examina-tion of the Protocols that provide guidance to states on how to protect and pre-serve the Mediterranean marine environment from oil pollution.