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.
Protection of the Black Sea from Pollution
For the purpose of protecting and preserving the environment of the Black Sea, Article 54 of the law obliges every subject of activity to carry out measures ensuring the prevention, suppression, reduction and control of pollution of the sea with dangerous substances and materials from land-based sources of pollution, from ships, as a result of activity on the continental shelf, during transboundary cargo transport, from the atmosphere, by waters flowing into the sea, and by dumping. This list describes all the main pathways of marine pollution, and the organization of coastal activity begins from the classification of these sources. The legal regime of protecting the Black Sea from pollution within Georgia's jurisdiction is established by Georgian legislation.
The Special Mercury Regime
Within the frame of the same article a special legal regime is formed for the protection of human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and leaks of mercury and its compounds: the primary mining of mercury — mining in which the main substance extracted is mercury — and the use of mercury or a mercury compound in the mining and/or processing of gold are prohibited. The import, export and transit of mercury are permissible on the basis of the issuance of prior substantiated consent, in accordance with the rule approved by the Government; individual products enriched with mercury whose production, import, export and transit are restricted, and industrial processes in which the use of mercury or a mercury compound is restricted, are likewise determined by that rule. In the marine context it matters because mercury is a highly dangerous persistent pollutant with a capacity for bioaccumulation in the food chain.