Bridging Boundaries: Implementing the BBNJ Agreement in the Mediterranean Sea and Its Synergies with the Barcelona Convention

The BBNJ Agreement represents a crucial milestone in international environmental governance, underscoring the significance of collective efforts in marine biodiversity conservation. This treaty addresses the urgent need to protect and sustainably manage marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), which cover almost half of the Earth’s surface. To date, only 1.8 percent of the high seas have been designated as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) across the world's oceans; this figure is even more limited in the Mediterranean Sea. BBNJ Agreement provides a legal basis for establishing area based management tools ( ABMTs) and MPAs in ABNJs to foster such measures for effective protection of the marine environment in such areas.

While the BBNJ Agreement sets a legal framework for establishing these measures, it upholds existing legal instruments, frameworks and relevant regional and sectoral bodies. There are several regional environmental agreements to regionally and synergistically implement programs and activities related to Multilateral Environmental Agreements dealing with marine environmental protection in different seas and oceans, starting from the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean (Barcelona Convention) 1976 as a first regional sample. With the adoption of the BBNJ Agreement, its relation to these regional agreements for establishing and utilizing such tools should be studied for effective implementation. The scope of this work is limited to the relationship between the Barcelona Convention and the BBNJ Agreement regarding the establishment and implementation of such measures by examining the ABMTs, including MPAs, under the general BBNJ regime, the Special Protected Areas under the Barcelona Convention, and mutual entry into force of these two regimes. In addition, this work examines which legal instrument should prevail in the case of the designation of MPAs in the ABNJ of the Mediterranean Sea.