A UN Treaty for Marine Biodiversity: Establishing Environmental Policy Integration in Global Governance

An extensive regime


| CAN THE BBNJ AGREEMENT BRING ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY INTEGR ATION?
Marine biodiversity is under threat.The massive environmental destruction in the ocean space, including overfishing, waste dumping and ocean debris has led to an expansive loss of marine biodiversity in 'areas beyond national jurisdiction' (ABNJ) which cover half of the oceans (FAO, 2018)-and are thereby a big part of the Earth's principal life support system (Laffoley et al., 2020).Yet, an upcoming international legally binding instrument on the conservation and sustainable use of 'biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction' -called the BBNJ Agreement -gives hope for improving the state of the marine environment and creating healthier oceans.As such, the establishment of the BBNJ Agreement presents a 'unique opportunity to begin a new chapter in ocean governance' (Hammond & Jones, 2021, p. 1).
The initiation of the BBNJ Agreement started a decade ago, as during the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio + 20), States committed themselves 'to address, on an urgent basis [...] the issue of the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction,

| 391
A NEW UN TREATY FOR MARINE BIODIVERSITY including by taking a decision on the development of an international instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea' (UNGA, 2014a).The United Nations General Assembly decided in Resolution 72/249 (24 December 2017) (UNGA, 2018) to hold an Intergovernmental Conference under the auspices of the United Nations to take into account the recommendations of the Preparatory Committee established by resolution 69/292 of June 2015 on the features and to discuss the text of an international legally binding instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (UNGA, 2015a).The first session took place from 4 September to 17 September 2018, the second from 25 March to 5 April 2019, and the third from 19 August to 30 August 2019.The fourth session, which was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic by decisions 74/543 and 75/570, took place from 7 March to 18 March 2022 (https://www.un.org/bbnj/conte nt/fourt h-subst antiv e-session).
From the upheld sessions, four main elements have been defined for the BBNJ Agreement: (1) marine genetic resources, including questions on sharing of benefits; (2) measures such as area-based management tools, including marine protected areas; (3) environmental impact assessments; and (4) capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology (UNGA, 2019).
A central aspect that comes with these focal points is the emphasis of integration and coordination: the goal is no longer to create policy instruments for implementing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provisions in single policy domains, such as fisheries, but to implement the package of these four interrelated elements across ocean governance, together and as a whole.
The BBNJ Agreement subscribes to the UNCLOS preamble which acknowledges that "the problems of ocean space are closely interrelated and need to be considered as a whole" [UNCLOS, Preamble] (United Nations, 1982).The aim to be integrative is particularly illustrated in Art. 2 of the BBNJ Agreement draft text: "the long-term conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction through effective implementation of the relevant provisions of the Convention and further international cooperation and coordination " [4,Art. 2].
This focus on integration and coordination can be found throughout the UNCLOS and is also carried by a large variety of global, regional, and sectoral policy instruments in the wider institutional landscape of ocean governance (Mahon et al., 2015), detailed below.
Yet, despite numerous global and regional policy instruments for ocean governance, integration and coordination problems prevail (Mahon et al., 2015;Rothwell & Stephens, 2016), impeding effective protection and conservation of marine biodiversity in ABNJ.Key challenges are the identification and closing of institutional gaps, for example, overlap of competencies, but also the development of actionable ways to cooperate internationally, in an overall fragmented ocean governance structure (Blasiak & Yagi, 2016).
Against this backdrop, this paper asks, what are the institutional opportunities and challenges of the BBNJ Agreement to create integrated policies for environmental protection in a fragmented ocean governance landscape?
This paper assesses the integrative potential of the BBNJ Agreement, ex ante, to evaluate how problematic areas of integrative policy-making can be harmonized in ocean legislation.For this purpose, this paper draws on three decades of experience with the concept of Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) in literature.
EPI can generally be seen from two angles (Azizi et al., 2019;Biermann, et al., 2009): One of harmonization of policies within the same environmental policy field; and one of integration of different sectoral policies, such as across the sustainability dimensions economy, environment and society; while in the second perspective, the environmental dimension would be given a "principles priority" over the economic and social dimensions, which means to put more legal and political emphasis on environmental issues.In this article, the integrational focus lies on the latter as it asks whether the BBNJ Agreement can lead to EPI as prioritizing environmental policies over economic and social policies.
This paper is structured as follows: subsequent to the introduction, the integrative force of the BBBNJ Agreement in ocean governance is explained to map its position in the ocean governance landscape.In section 3, the methods are indicated in detail.Section 4 elaborates on the EPI-framework which consists of four key dimensions that guide the forthcoming analysis.Respectively, section 5 runs the analysis of these

Policy Implications
• The normative framework of the BBNJ Agreement prioritizes environmental protection over economic and social objectives.• Defining competences and converging political interests is key for the BBNJ Agreement.• Environmental impact assessments are important for fostering the protection of the marine environment.• Establishing administrative and regulatory coherence between the BBNJ Agreement and existing policy instruments is essential for environmental policy integration in ocean governance.
four EPI dimensions: first, the normative perspective, second, the political perspective, third, the conignitive perspective, fourth, the institutional arrangements.The final conclusion summarizes the key insights of the analysis and discusses further research avenues.

| THE BBNJ AGREEMENT AS AN INTEGR ATIVE FORCE IN OCE AN GOVERNANCE
Academic and policy literature widely shares the perspective that for the BBNJ Agreement to be successful, new ways of policy-making and implementation are needed: Challenges of integration are addressed in the BBNJ draft treaty text (UNGA, 2019), but also by UN bodies (International Maritime Organization, 2016; UNDG, 2017) and academic scholars (De Santo et al., 2019;Durussel et al., 2018;Friedman, 2019;Friedman et al., 2018;Tladi, 2015;Wright et al., 2018), which altogether call for an integrative approach to the realization of the BBNJ Agreement.
While the rise of policy instruments has led to more fragmentation in ocean governance, the BBNJ Agreement could possibly act as an integrative force that coordinates existing institutions, and thereby help to realize EPI in practice (Freestone et al., 2014).As Nilsson and Persson (2017, p. 37) state, EPI 'involves a non-trivial "internal coherence" challenge, considering that the environment is highly multidimensional (e.g., climate, biodiversity, water quality) and sometimes facing difficult tradeoffs'.
However, the BBNJ Agreement itself can give priority to environmental concerns regarding marine biodiversity while being challenged to respect the competencies and role of existing policy instruments with diverging objectives.Literature calls this consideration to 'not undermine' as it requires to not take away influence from other institutions that have been established already (Friedman, 2019;Scanlon, 2018;Tladi, 2015).
The BBNJ Agreement presents a considerable potential for integrating different policy domains while prioritizing environmental aspects.In ocean governance, the BBNJ Agreement would operate as an implementation agreement to the UNCLOS while containing provisions derived from a variety of other policy instruments, including the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (United Nations, 1992a), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (United Nations, 1992b), the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Landbased Activities (UNEP, 1995), the London Convention (IMO, 1975), the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (United Nations, 1995), the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (IMO, 1973) as well as various regional agreements which cover the North Atlantic and adjacent seas (Mediterranean, Caribbean, Baltic, Black), the South Atlantic and polar regions (Southern Ocean and Arctic Ocean) (Mahon et al., 2015).
Moreover, it would possibly impact the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development established by the United Nations in 2015 (UNGA, 2015b).The Agenda begins its preamble with 'This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity' (UNGA, 2015b, Preamble), which reflects the three sustainability dimensions society, environment, and economy.The BBNJ Agreement would potentially be reflected in Goal 14 of the Agenda as it explicitly refers to the conservation and sustainable use of 'the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development' (UNGA, 2015b).This Goal addresses various aspects related to marine ecosystems, including pollution, ocean acidification, harvesting and overfishing, but also to economic and social aspects such as economic benefits, tourism, scientific knowledge, and markets.It promotes the enhancement of the conservation and sustainable use of oceans and marine resources by implementing international law as reflected in the UNCLOS (Goal 14.c), which provides the legal framework for the conservation and sustainable use of oceans and their resources, as recalled in paragraph 158 of 'The future we want' (UNGA, 2012).In this regard, the BBNJ Agreement becomes even more relevant as its success is crucial for the fulfilment of the 2030 Agenda (FAO, 2018).

| METHOD
This paper uses reflexive thematic analysis, which is a 'theoretically flexible interpretative approach to qualitative data analysis that facilitates the identification and analysis of patterns or themes in a given data set' (Byrne, 2021, p. 3).Key for the reflexive approach to thematic analysis is the researcher's active engagement in knowledge generation (Braun & Clarke, 2019).As Braun and Clarke (2019, p. 594) explain, reflexive thematic analysis is about 'the researcher's reflective and thoughtful engagement with their data and their reflexive and thoughtful engagement with the analytic process' (Braun & Clarke, 2019).Reflexive thematic analysis is a reflection of the researcher's interpretive data analysis at the junction of: (1) the dataset; (2) the theoretical assumptions of the analysis; and (3) the researcher's analytical skills/resources (Braun & Clarke, 2019).Codes represent how the researcher interprets patterns of meaning across the dataset (Byrne, 2021).Because of this -while reviewing the selected documents based on the four EPI categories -this paper relies on interpreative analysis.
The analysis is based on a carefully selected collection of multilateral environmental agreements, official policy documents, reports, and website information.
Central documents were the BBNJ draft treaty text (UNGA, 2019) and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (United Nations, 1982).Other relevant documents and reports were the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin and current website documents provided by the UN.The main literature areas used for the analysis are: (1) environmental Policy Integration literature; and (2) ocean governance literature.Content analysis was conducted to study key features of the BBNJ Agreement and other instruments, negotiation protocols as well as EPI-dimensions established by the literature.The collected data have been screened based on their content and relevance for EPI.
The selected case study for this paper is the BBNJ Agreement.The draft treaty document I use for the analysis was published in 2019 (UNGA, 2019).I focus on the treaty provisions which give an indication for options of creating EPI.The additional documents allow for evaluating the negotiation process of this treaty.I chose the upcoming BBNJ Agreement as a case study as it will probably be the most recent multilateral environmental agreement in the global policy arena which is widely expected to 'strengthen the governance framework' (Hammond & Jones, 2021) at the global scale.Further, it may have a pioneering effect in global environmental governance other than ocean governance.For example a multilateral environmental agreement could be developed and implemented on soil protection which would integrate agriculture, climate change and deforestation issues.

| DEFINING KEY D IMENSIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY INTEGR ATION
EPI is a leading concept in global governance and has a well-documented history.EPI first reached prominence through the Brundtland report in 1987 (WCED, 1987), and has been part of various policy programmes ever since (Biermann et al., 2009;Nilsson & Persson, 2017).The Brundtland report critically remarks that.
(t)hose responsible for managing natural resources and protecting the environment are institutionally separated from those responsible for managing the economy.The real world of interlocked economic and ecological systems will not change; the policies and institutions must.(p.9) Thus, what is needed is an institutional integration of environmental issues with economic (and social) issues.This integrationist narrative has also been adopted by the Rio Declaration which resulted from the Earth-Summit in 1992 (UNCED, 1992).Despite the fact that the Summit covered a wide range of social and economic issues, it was widely acknowledged that environmental concerns have been disregarded and that environmental protection should be stressed in the development process.Principle 4 explicitly communicates this goal by emphasizing that '[i]n order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it' (UNCED, 1992).
Also in the academic literature, the concept of EPI is continuously trending (Jordan & Lenschow, 2010;Nilsson & Eckerberg, 2007;Runhaar et al., 2014).From a larger perspective, literature identifies four different aspects of policy-making, as illustrated by Jordan and Lenschow (2010) and more recently by Nilsson and Persson (2017), summarized in Table 1.First, the normative framework of EPI, second, political will, third, cognitive aspects, and fourth, institutional arrangements.
Normative frameworks relate to the positioning of environmental goals in comparison to economic and social objectives, as for example Lafferty and Hovden (2003) grant environmental policies a' principled priority' over economic and social policies.Political will is considered to be the core element for the practical implementation of EPI (Dupont & Oberthür, 2012;Jordan & Lenschow, 2010;Nilsson & Persson, 2017).A political perspective is also relevant for exploring ways to compromise different stakeholder interests while bringing them together with EPI (Hertin & Berkhout, 2001;Nilsson & Persson, 2017).A cognitive perspective has often been adopted by scholars to explore the 'positive understanding of EPI' (Jordan & Lenschow, 2010) and is seen as a key factor in policy learning in EPI (Hertin & Berkhout, 2001;Nilsson & Persson, 2017).Hertin and Berkhout (2001) for example, argue that EPI is about social learning in the broader frame of changing world views, values and norms.Institutional arrangements are often part of EPI literature.Yet, while most literature on EPI covers the supranational or national levels  (Nilsson et al., 2012;Persson et al., 2016) there are only limited studies covering the global governance level (Biermann, et al., 2009).A central difference between a supranational union and global governance is that the first mainly considers governments and nation states while the latter also refers to inter and non-governmental bodies, such as NGOs.EPI from a global perspective is not as much concerned with procedural or administrative issues as given in national policy-making and implementation, but is essentially challenged by an institutionally and organizationally fragmented governance system (Biermann, et al., 2009;Zelli & van Asselt, 2013).

| BUILD ING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY INTEGR ATION THROUGH THE BBNJ AGREEMENT
The BBNJ Agreement as a case study in this paper allows to make an assessment of its potential to contribute to EPI.The four dimensions that have been defined by EPI literature help to categorize the various fields in which the BBNJ Agreement is influencing ocean governance and being influenced by it.In this section, the paper sets out the key insights about opportunities and challenges of the BBNJ Agreement to contribute to these four dimensions of EPI.

| Insight 1
The normative framework of the BBNJ Agreement prioritizes environmental protection over economic and social objectives Among a variety of different and often fragmented policy goals in ocean governance, the BBNJ Agreement has the potential to guide existing policy instruments toward stronger protection of marine biodiversity in ABNJ, that is, unambiguous legal provisions, improved monitoring and law enforcement.In this perspective, the normative framework of EPI is strongly in alignment with the orientation of the BBNJ Agreement.In their article on EPI, Lafferty and Hovden (2003) argued for granting 'principled priority' to environmental objectives while other policy areas should be subordinate, including economic and social policies.Such a view has a large normative value for the BBNJ Agreement as the primary concern of its initiators was the increasingly detrimental situation of marine biodiversity in ABNJ.Although the emphasis of the BBNJ Agreement is conservation and sustainable use, which reflects still economic and social matters, the fact that the marine environment is supposed to be treated sustainability strengthens the environmental positioning thereof.Considerably, the granting of priority to environmental concerns is also given in the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (United Nations, 1995) which calls for more effective enforcement of conservation and management measures adopted for straddling and highly migratory fish stocks, due to the often ineffective management of high seas fisheries in many areas which lead to an overexploitation of resources and 'problems of unregulated fishing, over-capitalization, (…) and a lack of sufficient cooperation between States' (United Nations, 1995, p. 1).
However, from the perspective of EPI, the question is how this priority coincides with economic or social objectives of other policy instruments and bodies (IUCN, 2020).For example, fisheries subsidies have been established by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to raise economic benefits, yet they have led to an overexploitation of fish.These negative ecological consequences have motivated WTO members to negotiate over existing agreements (WTO, 2021a).
These WTO negotiations began in 2001 at the Doha Ministerial Conference with the target to 'clarify and improve' given WTO disciplines on fisheries subsidies.The Hong Kong Ministerial Conference focused on this mission in 2005, including a request to ban specific types of fisheries subsidies that lead to overcapacity and overfishing.Follow-up conferences and negotiations have finally -at the 12th Ministerial Conference end of 2021 -resulted in the submission of a draft treaty on fisheries subsidies, with the goal to not undermine the sustainability ambitions (WTO, 2021b).
Such initiatives are, however, significantly challenged by legal constraints as fisheries conservation and management efforts are usually addressed by the UNCLOS or other related instruments to which not all WTO members have consented (Young, 2009).Such governance gaps could be filled by the BBNJ Agreement as it offers a point of alignment for institutions which have diverging policy goals.For this, the BBNJ Agreement needs to navigate strategically and carefully among existing competencies of established institutions that operate in the same terrain, in order to 'not undermine' actors and powers.A shift in legal interpretations on the sharing of benefits from the ABNJ, or the introduction of new safeguards or precautionary measures on extractive industries, for example, could have significant economic ramifications (Arnaud-Haond et al., 2011).
While this article focuses on the prioritization of environmental aspects by the BBNJ Agreement in ocean governance, it is worth mentioning that also the integration of different policy domains, especially fisheries, pollution, biodiversity, and climate change are challenges.Mahon et al. (2015) have conducted a study on over 100 international agreements containing these policy areas in ABNJ and came to the conclusion that there is a large need for integration at the global and regional level in ocean governance.The authors recommend in this context that '(t)he entire set of governance arrangements for ABNJ and areas within national jurisdiction may be best approached as a single global ocean governance structure' (Mahon et al., 2015, p. 64).Such an overarching perspective may 'help to improve understanding of the very complex, disordered and fragmented set of arrangements for the ocean' (Mahon et al., 2015, p. 64).In that perspective, the BBNJ Agreement could give options for developing an overarching regulatory framework that provides guidance across existing policy instruments in ocean governance.

| Insight 2
Defining competences and converging political interests is key for the BBNJ Agreement In EPI literature, political will is a recurring theme (Jordan & Lenschow, 2010;Nilsson & Persson, 2017;Persson et al., 2016) and is also important for achieving integration through the BBNJ Agreement.Yet, the BBNJ Agreement is largely challenged to manage ocean governance through political will.Difficulties exist because integration takes place in a contested policy arena which -at the global governance level -is characterized by transnational interdependencies and externalities.Overall, the global governance level is a complex field for policy-making and for EPI as implementation structures are relatively weak and the scope for top-down legislative processes is more restricted than at the national level (Nilsson et al., 2009).As Oberthür (2009) explains, overarching frameworks for governance and EPI are weaker at the global level, compared to the national level, with the consequence of more restricted options for steering toward EPI than given for the national level.In the past, a major difficulty for implementing EPI at the global level has been the absence of an overarching set of rules or a global institution.Thus, rather than being a centrally defined rule set, the policy outcome of the BBNJ Agreement can be considered to be the result of negotiations between states and their national interests, interactions and 'relative powers' (Keohane, 1984;Milner & Moravcsik, 2009;Waltz, 1979).This is because there is not one single authority governing the world, but nation states that compromise their interests in order to achieve greater objectives, such as free trade or political peace (Luperfoy, 2019;Rosenau & Czempiel, 1992).
Early experiences in the negotiation phase of the BBNJ Agreement suggest that there was a widespread resistance toward a new agreement because of the disagreement regarding increased anthropogenic impacts and the failure of existing agreements (UNGA, 2014b(UNGA, , 2014c)).Others considered a lack in legislative frameworks to be the cause of poor coordination and 'counterproductive sectoralization' (Blasiak & Yagi, 2016, p. 212).As for decision-making, the BBNJ Agreement suggests that state parties create 'new global, regional and sectoral bodies to fill governance gaps' (UNGA, 2019, 4, Art. 6).Yet, delegates negotiating the BBNJ Agreement still disagree about the competences of a global decision-making body (UNGA, 2017).Fears from developed countries, such as the United States, the Russian Federation, or Japan, are mostly related to the development of a global, centralized BBNJ Agreement body which may duplicate mandates and undermine existing policy instruments (Blasiak et al., 2016).The Russian Federation, for example, questioned 'if a new body under the BBNJ Agreement would be more competent than existing regional and sectoral organizations' (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2018, p. 7).Similarly, the USA cautioned against a global system which would undermine existing instruments and duplicate mandates (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2018).Critical about the position of the USA regarding EPI is to oppose the inclusion of economic or social considerations in the BBNJ Agreement (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2018).
However, a point of agreement among the delegates which offers integration potential to the BBNJ Agreement is that sectoral organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, International Maritime Organization, or International Seabed Authority as well as regional fisheries management and regional seas bodies should be involved (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2018).Yet, it is unclear how and to what extent these bodies interact with a global decision-making body operating under the BBNJ Agreement (Blasiak et al., 2016).
Proponents of a global model argued that EPI can be provided and the conservation and sustainable use of the ABNJ resources can be achieved by the decisionmaking body of the BBNJ Agreement, which could implement and enforce area-based management tools irrespective of consulting with existing organizations (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2018).However, the opponents of a global approach did not view international principles as being sufficient for providing effective management of ocean basins through marine protected areas.They argue with the failure of the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement model which does not provide an assertive review process for establishing its principles, obligations, and standards, although this paper argues that it has been able to benefit the effectiveness of regional fisheries management organizations (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2018;Houghton, 2014).
The parties to the Fish Stocks Agreement understand its provisions as 'giving effect to their duty to cooperate' in accordance with UNCLOS, indicating that this legal content has emerged in the principle of cooperation, as stated in Article 5's statement of general principles.The potential of this principle premise is highlighted in Article 5 (a-l), where the agreement demands action on a number of additional principles, including the duty to protect biodiversity in the marine environment, sustainable use, and, most importantly, the precautionary approach, which is implemented through mechanisms such as best scientific evidence, impact assessment procedures, and information exchange (Ellis, 2001).
In sum, in future negotiations, delegates would benefit from assigning clear competences to the BBNJ Agreement bodies to clarify the relationship between the BBNJ Agreement and existing instruments.Most effort is required for the positioning toward a common strategy for environmental protection beyond national state interests (Vadrot et al., 2021).

| Insight 3
Environmental impact assessments are important for fostering the protection of the marine environment In EPI literature, scholars have emphasized that 'political activities are themselves rooted in particular cognitive frameworks' (Jordan & Lenschow, 2010, p. 152).Following EPI scholars, a cognitive perspective considers policy interests to be 'embedded in a frame of reference, which prestructures the thinking within a policy sector' (Lenschow, 2002, p. 17).In order to avoid a too limited problem framing that could hinder integration, EPI literature has pointed to (environmental) knowledge input through advisory mechanisms and environmental assessment procedures (Nilsson & Persson, 2017).As Nilsson and Persson (2017) have observed, in EPI, the promotion of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) procedures is common at the policy level as it provides a way to effectively include environmental aspects in policy processes.
As for the BBNJ Agreement, environmental impact assessments are suggested to be used as the central SEAtype, building one of the four key components of the BBNJ Agreement package (UNGA, 2019).An Environmental Impact Assessment is a prominent and well-established instrument promoting the protection of the marine environment in coastal and marine areas within national jurisdiction (Doelle & Sander, 2020;Jaeckel, 2015).The inclusion of these assessments in the BBNJ Agreement is therefore a step toward broadening and reforming policies, activities, plans and programmes that encompass the marine environment in ABNJ.This instrument as part of the BBNJ Agreement could become the'"default mechanism to capture existing or emerging activities not covered by sectoral environmental assessment processes' (Warner 2012, p. 498).
Thus, by positioning environmental impact assessments as a key element in the BBNJ Agreement provisions, this agreement presents a new chance for achieving EPI through establishing a structure for connecting global and regional institutions with shared interests and responsibilities in ABNJ (Warner, 2012).Central for realizing EPI in practice is that (in addition to area-based management tools/element 2 of the draft BBNJ Agreement) such instruments offer an opportunity to enhance cross-sectoral cooperation and harmonize best practice or 'customs of practice' in environmental assessments across regions, including deep seabed fishing and mining, ocean fertilization or waste dumping (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2018;Warner, 2012).Assessment frameworks can include such customs while evaluating current and future activities in the ABNJ and provide more transparency, consistency, and inclusiveness (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2018).

| Insight 4
Establishing administrative and regulatory coherence between the BBNJ Agreement and existing policy instruments is essential for EPI in ocean governance The institutional perspective in EPI literature -focusing on global governance -emphasizes the need for harmonized procedural and organizational arrangements (Biermann et al., 2009;Oberthür, 2009;Russel & Jordan, 2004).In this regard, establishing administrative and regulatory coherence between the BBNJ Agreement and existing policy instruments is essential for the fulfilment of EPI in ocean governance.Thus, for the BBNJ Agreement it is important to find an institutional way of balancing out environmental protection for marine biodiversity in ABNJ and the various institutional settings of existing policy instruments (Clark, 2020;Oude Elferink, 2019).In particular, the competences of the BBNJ Agreement body may be decisive for the improvement of international coordination and cooperation efforts for the protection of marine biodiversity, including those of the deep seabed (Kim, 2017).This coordination challenge confronting the BBNJ Agreement needs to be seen in the light of an institutional and organizational fragmented structure of global governance (Biermann & Kim, 2020) and within the environmental policy sector, as pointed out by EPI literature (Biermann et al., 2009;Zelli & van Asselt, 2013).To achieve policy ends, international policy arrangements rely on 'mechanisms of coordination and cooperation and the elaboration of internationally agreed normative prescriptions' (Nilsson et al., 2009, p. 341).Such a cooperation within and outside of intergovernmental organizations comes along with an increasingly growing expansion of a body of international legal instruments pursuing to protect the environment.
The most significant barrier to achieving EPI now is that -despite the multitude of global and regional treaties and other institutional arrangements for the governance of ocean issues and the prevention of environmental degradation in ABNJ -the challenge of coordinating and integrating different domains, such as biodiversity, fisheries, climate, and pollution still remains (Blasiak & Yagi, 2016;Friedman, 2019;Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen et al., 2018;Mahon et al., 2015).
The absence of an overarching framework for coordination and implementation efforts might be the cause of governance gaps and fragmentation while being confronted with 'expanding anthropogenic pressures' (Blasiak & Yagi, 2016, p. 211).
These difficulties are addressed in the BBNJ Agreement that calls state parties to: cooperate for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, including through strengthening and enhancing cooperation among existing relevant legal instruments and frameworks and relevant global, regional and sectoral bodies in the achievement of the objective of this Agreement (UNGA, 2019, Art.6.1).
To implement such demands, the development of 'joint interplay management' (Oberthür, 2009) is suggested by ocean governance literature (Durussel et al., 2018;Friedman, 2019).Such an approach is not following a hierarchical top-down approach as possibly given at the national policy level, but rather a systems-oriented way of policy-making which offers the possibility to support co-equal bodies who share the same interests in engaging in 'synergistic collaboration' and structured communication (Biermann, et al., 2009;Friedman, 2019;Oberthür, 2009).
Such a joint interplay management could help to'"not undermine (existing) relevant legal instruments and frameworks and relevant global, regional and sectoral bodies, and that promotes coherence and coordination with those instruments, frameworks and bodies' (UNGA, 2019 Art.4.3) and to foster a more coherent management of marine biodiversity by strengthening existing regional and global competent bodies (Durussel et al., 2018).The above elaborated normative framework of the BBNJ Agreement hence aims to promote an inclusive approach to international collaboration and a commitment to resolve governance issues.
However, the interpretation of 'not undermining' is yet unclear.As Scanlon argues, such a commitment could be understood in two ways: first, not undermining with an emphasis on bodies could mean to 'protect existing organizations from any infringement upon their "authority or mandate" or any "measures" they may have taken' (Scanlon, 2018, p. 406).Second, with an emphasis on instruments and frameworks, this commitment could be interpreted as 'safeguarding the "effectiveness or objectives" of existing regimes but could also enable a new body "to implement existing agreements more effectively" (Scanlon, 2018, p. 407).The ultimate outcome of such an interpretation could be a significantly altered institutional hierarchy and a body authorized to set up instruments which can be superior to existing regimes (Friedman, 2019).According to Wright, such a central institution may 'direct (…) via the inherent power of the UNGA, sectoral and regional bodies to take conservation measures' (Wright et al. 2018, p. 14).A central body of this kind may in fact undermine existing policy instruments in ocean governance and is also opposed by powerful countries as mentioned in Insight 2. Friedman notes in this context that such hermeneutics embed different ways of managing the interplay between regimes with overlapping objectives and interests (Friedman, 2019;Oberthür, 2009).Considerably, the BBNJ Agreement stipulates a package while being unclear about the management approach needed for achieving its objectives.However, the package elements touch upon competences of existing bodies and require discussions on how to enforce measures equally along the different regimes (Friedman, 2019).After all, to promote EPI, also existing bodies must take the protection and conservation of marine biodiversity much more into consideration.

| CONCLUSIONS
This article has focused on environmental policy integration regarding the new ocean treaty.The nature and design of the BBNJ Agreement offers a much-needed opportunity for transitioning toward stronger integration of environmental policies in ocean governance.The four studied environmental policy integration dimensions give hope for achieving institutional harmonization through the BBNJ Agreement while each dimension is critically challenging this novel instrument.
First, the normative framework gives 'principled prioritization' to environmental protection and conservation of marine biodiversity.Conversely, a balanced relation between the environmental, economic, and social dimensions is, at least formally, not targeted.This raises the question how the BBNJ Agreement can be complementary to existing policy instruments with divergent objectives.Ideally for achieving EPI, such policy instruments would take the protection of marine biodiversity into account when policy decisions are made.Although the focus of this paper is on the prioritization of environmental aspects over economic and social issues, it is worth mentioning that the BBNJ Agreement must take the integration of cross-sectoral environmental elements into consideration, especially of fisheries, pollution, biodiversity, and climate change, which are currently rather disordered and fragmented.
Second, political will is crucial for negotiating and granting competences to the BBNJ Agreement.Critical is the opposition of powerful delegates such as the USA toward the establishment of a global, centralized body of the BBNJ Agreement that could duplicate mandates and undermine competences of existing instruments.Positive, however, is the fact that after vast initial doubts about the need for the BBNJ Agreement and its constitution, the majority of countries (both developed and developing) took part in its negotiation (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2018).While delegates are still developing a meaningful compromise on the competences of the BBNJ Agreement decision making body, the BBNJ Agreement draft provisions already set the tone toward an improved international cooperation and coordination.
Third, the cognitive perspective shows that policy interests are coupled to sets of ideas which prestructure the perception and thinking in policy sectors.For the BBNJ Agreement, the role of environmental impact assessments is important in providing knowledge input and, thus, builds one of the key elements of the BBNJ Agreement, which this paper evaluates as an opportunity for establishing environmental policy integration.
Lastly, institutional arrangements in ocean governance are often fragmented, resulting in poor cooperation and coordination of policy instruments and regulatory bodies.Such a fragmentation at the global governance level requires conjoint consensus and collaborative decision-making for achieving environmental policy integration.For the BBNJ Agreement, a joint interplay management could help to integrate existing policy instruments and bodies and improve the coordination and cooperation efforts among them without undermining their mandates.
Overall, the BBNJ Agreement has the potential to contribute to environmental policy integration in ocean governance.Yet, empirical studies on environmental policy integration are very limited in literature, especially those addressing the global governance level.To understand mechanisms and drivers of environmental policy integration in global policy sectors, more studies would be needed.Due to these conditions, it is difficult to identify the exact opportunities and barriers around environmental policy integration in the field of ocean governance.However, if taken seriously, the BBNJ Agreement can set a prime example of environmental policy integration which would ideally have spillover effects on the broader spectrum of global governance.

ACK NOWLED GEM ENT
I would like to thank the two anonymous peerreviewers for their valuable input.Their comments have helped making the article more substantial and allowed me to develop a more critical reflection of the subject matter.

DATA AVAI L ABI LI T Y STATEM ENT
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.