The Dilemma of Marine Plastic Pollution Control: Structural Divide Between Soft Law and Hard Law and the Debate on the Restructuring of Global Regulation

Ocean plastic pollution has evolved from an isolated environmental problem into a profound global governance structural crisis. With the surge in global plastic production, it is projected that the volume of plastic waste entering the ocean annually will reach a staggering 23 to 37 million tons by 2040, which is not only a direct threat to ecosystems but also a severe test of the existing international maritime law governance system.

The current international legal framework, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), while providing broad obligations for the prevention and reduction of marine pollution (such as Article 194), proves inadequate against the emerging and highly fragmented challenge of plastic pollution. The core contradiction lies in the structural mismatch between the grand narrative of legal obligations and the complexity of specific pollution sources. On one hand, existing regulations exhibit significant ambiguity in defining the long-term ecological risks of microplastics and effectively restricting the transboundary movement of plastic waste (i.e., loopholes in "pollution transfer"), making it difficult for "soft law first" response strategies to translate into enforceable "hard law constraints."

This governance gap is evident at several key levels: first, the dilemma of enforcing legal obligations. Although Articles 213 to 233 of UNCLOS provide tools like port inspections and enforcement by coastal states, the lack of a cross-national coordination mechanism, coupled with the difficulty in establishing clear causal links between pollution and specific environmental damage, presents significant obstacles to effectively applying these legal instruments to specific cases of plastic pollution. Second, there is a lack of regulatory coverage. The international legal system only covers a very small fraction of the plastic life cycle, leading to severe deficiencies in effectively constraining land-based emissions and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), rendering source reduction strategies largely ineffective in practice.

To achieve a paradigm shift in governance, the international community must move beyond simple multilateral consultation and transition to building an integrated governance system with multi-level, embedded constraints. Research suggests that this restructuring requires upgrading the normative hierarchy: on one hand, elevating the ambition of the Global Plastics Treaty (GPT), such as transforming the precautionary principle into a "non-regression clause" and setting global production quotas at the visionary level; on the other hand, these grand goals must be combined with specific, actionable institutional tools. This includes drawing inspiration from the carbon market mechanism of the Paris Agreement to quantify plastic production caps and deepening the revision of the Basel Convention through mandatory extended producer responsibility mechanisms to internalize costs.

Furthermore, innovative institutional design is crucial in specific sea areas and cross-border governance. For example, under the framework of the BBNJ Agreement, rules for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) must be clarified, enforceable thresholds for the "no-harm principle" must be established, and the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) over specific pollution incidents under multi-stakeholder governance models should be explored. Drawing on China's "Blue Circle" pilot experience, institutional innovations for joint supervision by multiple stakeholders in key ecologically sensitive areas should be explored.

Ultimately, the success of managing ocean plastic pollution depends not only on scientific monitoring progress but also on the adaptability of the international legal governance model.Finally, the success in tackling marine plastic pollution depends not only on the progress of scientific monitoring but also on the adaptability of the international legal governance model. Only through vertical integration (aligning GPT with climate mechanisms) and horizontal strengthening (enhancing technology transfer and mutual recognition of standards) can we effectively bridge the structural gap between the existing legal framework and the reality of pollution, enabling global ocean governance to move from a fragmented reactive model to a long-term strategic system with foresight and enforceability.