CURRENT ISSUES AND KEY THEMES 31 Liability and Compensation for Ship-Source Marine Pollution: The International System

legislative responses to marine pollution accidents are of-ten directly attributable to the repercussions, political and otherwise, from such accidents. For example, many states, Australia, Canada, and the UK among these, revised their marine pollution legislation after the Torrey Canyon acci-dent in 1967. Canada’s Shipping Act was again extensively revised after the Arrow disaster in 1971, and France revised its legislation extensively after the Amoco Cadiz ground-ing in 1978. In the more recent past, the United States re-acted strongly after Exxon Valdez; Australia after the Kirki and Iron Baron disasters; the North African states after the Kharg V spill; the Malacca Straits states after the Naga-saki Spirit and Maersk Navigator collisions; and the UK, again, after the Braer and Sea Empress groundings. Ac-tion at the IMO’s international level was commensurately speeded up. In other words, the periodic serious marine pollution ac-cident appears to have indirect positive benefits for the marine environment by tightening up regulations, focus-ing attention, stimulating pollution control and related scientific research, and generally raising environmental consciousness in an industry that, despite the IMO’s guid-ing principle of ‘safer ships and cleaner seas’, has concen-trated more on the former than the latter. All of this is very good providing that revisions of laws and updating of re-sponses occur at the international level and are then quickly implemented at the national level. It is hardly necessary to stress that shipping is an international industry that can only be regulated with globally accepted rules developed through intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). This approach ensures uniform solutions expressed in terms of international maritime law. Unilateralism in an International Setting Problems arise when states do not implement what they have agreed to internationally or, perhaps even worse, if they seek to take a unilateral approach that is often not based on a full appreciation of the repercussions of such action. The reasons for such action may, at times, be per-fectly understandable. If a state has been at the receiving end of a serious pollution accident, there is bound to be

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