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Lan Ngoc Nguyen and Alex Oude Elferink – both affiliates of the Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea (NILOS) and the Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law (UCWOSL) of Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� – together with Vito De Lucia of the Norwegian Center for the Law of the Sea of the ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� of Tromsø (Norway) have edited the volume 'International Law and Marine Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction – Reflections on Justice, Space, Knowledge and Power', which was published by Brill/Nijhoff in January 2022.

The legal regime of areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) has received much attention in the last decade. Currently, the issue is primarily considered at the intergovernmental conference convened by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to negotiate the agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of ABNJ. This process was initiated under the aegis of the UNGA in the early 2000s and is also referred to as the BBNJ process. The negotiating agenda is comprised of four main items: area-based management tools (ABMTs), including marine protected areas (MPAs); marine genetic resources, including the sharing of benefits arising from their utilization; environmental impact assessments; and capacity building and technological transfer. 

While touching upon the negotiating agenda of the BBNJ process, the book casts a significantly wider net by reflecting on broader theoretical questions, and questions that are not explicitly on that agenda but are nonetheless important for understanding the challenges that the legal regime for ABNJ may pose to the law of the sea. Accordingly, the 12 substantive chapters in the book address theoretical questions as well as more specific practical problems related to the governance of the ABNJ. The chapters all pick up the four overarching themes of the project that resulted in this edited volume: justice, space, knowledge, and power. These themes also provide the core of the concluding chapter prepared by the editors. 

In addition to editing the book, including the preparation of the introductory and concluding chapters, Lan Nguyen and Alex Oude Elferink also contributed to the substantive chapters. Lan Nguyen prepared a chapter on the regimes of the high seas and the Area entitled “Principled Challenges; Between Collective Interest and Individual Freedom”. Alex Oude Elferink, together with Baine Kerr of UCWOSL and NILOS, prepared a chapter on the choice of the international community to deal with the issue of biodiversity in ABNJ in the framework of the UNGA and not the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD): “Finding a Home for BBNJ – The CBD, the LOSC, and the General Assembly; Complementary Alternatives?” Alex Oude Elferink also contributed a chapter on the relationship between ABMTs and MPAs, entitled “Protecting the Environment of ABNJ through Marine Protected Areas and Area-based Management Tools; Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full and Whose Glass Is It Anyway?”.