The Legal Base of Marine Environmental Protection
The general norms of maritime law — ship registration, crewing, shipping contracts — sit in separate legislation and are not the basis of this page; what is documented here is the regime of marine environmental protection under the Georgian Law on Environmental Protection. Under Article 45 of the law, natural ecosystems, landscapes and territories must be protected from pollution, disturbance, damage, degradation, depletion and destruction. Subject to protection are: the sea coastal zone; swamps, spring heads, the sources of water reservoirs and rivers, glaciers, caves; subalpine and floodplain forests; valuable forest massifs; green zone forests; sanitary protection zones and territories. Any activity related to the use and management of natural ecosystems, landscapes and territories, and their management regime, is carried out taking into account environmental protection norms and requirements, while the issues related to their use and management, including land use planning and zoning, are determined by Georgian legislation. The sea coastal zone stands first in this list: it is the belt where sea and land interact, and where ecological disturbance shows itself fastest, while the protection of swamps, spring heads and river sources protects the quality of inflowing waters from the very source.