Māris kļaviņŠ, azamat azizov, JĀnis zaļoksnis environment, pollution, development: the case of uzbekistan

 10.5.1.  First phase: sea resources
In the beginning international environ 
mental protection 
focused on systematising the issues of jurisdiction and ensuring 
the administration of international watercourses by passing laws 
for  transboundary  rivers  and  lakes.  Attention  was  drawn  to  the 
popula tions of migrating wildlife as well due to the fact that no 
state could single-handedly take care of its protection when the 
growth of industry threatened to destroy many species; for example, 
the government of Switzerland proposed (albeit unsuccessfully) a 
formation of an international committee to protect migratory birds 
of Europe as early as in 1872. However, different governments had 
begun taking measures to protect nature even earlier than that; they 
were mostly to do with the interests of local economies – protection 
of forests, inland waters, mineral fields and certain wildlife species.
With the exception of the seal protection treaty (adopted in 
1911), all the other early attempts to regulate the use of joint natural 
resources required so much debate that in the end they turned out 
to  be  inefficient  and  had  to  be  postponed.  Dealing  with  environ-
mental  problems  was  difficult  due  to  the  fact  that  there  was  no 

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ENVIRONMENT, POLLUTION, DEVELOPMENT:  THE CASE OF UZBEKISTAN
clearly defined ground and strict political approach; moreover, there 
were  cultural  differences,  and  all  the  aforementioned  aspects  led 
to different approaches. The attempt to ensure international whale 
protection turned out to be an especially unavailing episode in the 
history of international environ mental protection. The Convention 
on Restrictions of Whaling was signed in Geneva in 1931, and 
24  states  had  either  ratified  or  joined  it  up  to  1935.  However, 
the  Soviet  Union  and  Japan  –  the  two  states  most  involved  with 
whaling – did not sign the convention. In addition, the states that had 
signed the document had few duties to attend to. The International 
Whaling Commission was established in 1946 due to the initiative 
of the USA; a whaling code was adopted, and the commission could 
make amendments without holding official conferences. Yet, despite 
the authority given to the commission, the short-term interests of 
whaling were impossible to overcome, and the commission did not 
heed even its scientific advisors.
During the Conference on the Human Environ ment, whales 
were mentioned as a symbol of the antiecological behaviour of 
humans.  A  procession  was  organised  for  the  protection  of  whales 
and a decision was passed to recommend a 10-year moratorium on 
commercial whaling, which was supposed to enhance the activities 
of the International Whaling Commission; yet it took 10 more years 
to authorise the moratorium.
The North Pacific Fur Seal Convention managed to protect seals 
from a direct impact of human activities by providing that hunting 
as well as the population of seals both on land and sea territories 
were to be controlled. In this case, international cooperation was 
more success ful because the fur seals are a particular subspecies 
whose be ha viour is easily predictable – they have localised territo-
ries for breeding their young; thus, the territories can be controlled 
by the state governments. Whales, on the other hand, have different 
sub spe cies that populate different oceans; their behaviour is not eas-
ily pre dic table, resulting in difficulties to determine their numbers 
and regulate the size of the population. The differences in political, 
economic and geographical factors only contributed to complications 
of the process. 
Nevertheless, in 1982 the International Whaling Commission 
finally  voted  for  halting  commercial  whaling,  setting  a  period  of 
transition of three years. The states concerned with whaling – Japan, 
the  USSR,  Brazil,  Peru,  Norway,  Iceland  and  North  Korea  –  still 
opposed the vote. However, in 1990, when the five-year moratorium 
had ended, in a conference held by the International Whaling 
Commission, most of the members voted to prolong the moratorium. 
The states against it accepted the vote since refusing to do so would 
have cost them their political and business reputation.

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10. INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT