Normative conflicts and collaborative governance of environmental damage in modern naval armed conflicts: an original analysis based on legal mapping and composite security

IntroductionModern armed conflicts at sea frequently trigger transboundary marine pollution, inflicting irreversible damage on regional ecological baselines; however, contemporary international law exhibits a pronounced normative deficit in regulating such harm.MethodsEmploying doctrinal legal analysis and systematic interpretation, this study deconstructs and maps core legal norms—including Article 35(3) of Protocol Additional I to the Geneva Conventions and Article 192 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)—alongside key judicial precedents to examine the normative interaction between International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and the law of the sea during wartime.ResultsThe findings reveal a structural misalignment between the permissive logic of military necessity and the protective logic anchored in obligations erga omnes. Under strict judicial interpretation, the threefold cumulative threshold of "widespread, long‑term and severe" presents an insurmountable evidentiary barrier, creating a critical accountability void in modern naval warfare characterised by grey‑zone operations and non‑state actors.DiscussionTo bridge these lacunae, this study formulates a collaborative governance framework grounded in Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). At the macro level, it transposes the ecological vulnerability assessment criteria of Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSAs) into the IHL framework to reconstruct a legal mechanism for wartime special marine ecological protection zones, while drawing analogies from Articles 100 and 107 of UNCLOS to establish a cooperative universal visit‑and‑search mechanism targeting wartime environmental hazards. At the micro level, using the domestic legal integration of China's maritime rights enforcement as an illustrative case, it demonstrates a feasible pathway for sovereign states to fill international legal vacuums via domestic legislation. Ultimately, this research underscores that effective wartime marine environmental protection requires a paradigm shift in international law—transitioning from a pure "law of war regulation" toward a framework that actively safeguards common interests.