South Africa helps draft global roadmap linking ocean dumping rules to new high seas treaty

Proposal co-sponsored with eight other nations calls for a new working group to align decades-old anti-dumping laws with the BBNJ Agreement, ahead of an IMO meeting in London this October

South Africa has co-sponsored a proposal to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) calling for closer coordination between the world's oldest global ocean dumping rules and the newly enforced international treaty protecting marine life on the high seas.

The paper was submitted alongside Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, Monaco, the Netherlands and Norway, and will be considered when the governing bodies of the London Convention and London Protocol meet in London from 5 to 9 October.

The London Convention and its 1996 Protocol are the main global agreements controlling what can, and cannot, be dumped into the ocean, covering everything from dredged harbour material to old ships and platforms. Unlike many maritime rules, they apply almost everywhere at sea, including waters far beyond any country's own coastline.

A separate and much newer agreement, formally the Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, is better known as the BBNJ Agreement or the high seas treaty. Adopted by the United Nations in 2023, it entered into force on 17 January 2026 and gives countries new powers to create marine protected areas and to demand environmental impact assessments for activities in the roughly two thirds of the ocean that lies beyond any nation's jurisdiction. Its first formal meeting of member states is due to take place in January 2027.

Two rulebooks, one ocean

With two major sets of ocean rules now in force, the co-sponsors argue that the risk of confusion, duplication or gaps is real. Several activities already regulated under the London Convention and Protocol, among them dumping permits, the storage of captured carbon dioxide beneath the seabed, incineration at sea and proposed forms of marine geoengineering, could equally attract new obligations under the high seas treaty. Without deliberate coordination, the co-sponsors warn, operators and regulators could face two separate approval processes for the same activity, or find that neither treaty adequately covers it.

South Africa's seat at the table

South Africa is the only African country among the nine co-sponsors, a position that puts it directly in the room as the rules connecting these two ocean regimes are drawn up. The proposal itself stresses the stakes for developing coastal states, small island states and least developed countries, many of which have limited technical capacity to navigate two overlapping sets of international ocean law at once.

If approved, the proposal would establish an intersessional correspondence group, in effect a working group operating between formal meetings, tasked with mapping where the two treaties overlap and drafting a long-term strategy for how they should work together. The co-sponsors have proposed the following timetable:

◼︎ 2026: the London meeting refines the group's mandate and formally establishes it

◼︎ 2027: the group's findings are reviewed and any decisions on cooperation are made

◼︎ 2028: a long-term coordination strategy is adopted

◼︎ From 2029: the arrangement is reviewed annually to decide whether it should continue

Delegates in London this October will not be asked to adopt a final strategy. Instead, the governing bodies of the London Convention and Protocol will be asked only to approve the new workstream and its outline terms of reference in principle, leaving the detail to be refined over the years ahead.