Abstract
Marine litters and the general pollution of our marine environment have become a regular and common sight in most coastal communities in Nigeria, from plastic litters to waste oil on our rivers and even vessel wrecks are all becoming a bane on the economic activities that depends on our marine environment, and the major sources of the pollution of the marine environment has been proven to be from human activities on land. The concern both to man and the living resources of the marine environment are real. Fishing, beach leisure and navigational activities are all negatively impacted upon by the menace of marine environment pollution. It has thus, become apposite to examine the legal regimes dealing with Land-Based Marine Pollution with the view to understanding the adequacies or otherwise of our legal system in properly regulating land based marine pollution and to suggest ways to strengthen the regulation of the sector with a view to ending the social, economic and environmental blight of marine pollution. This article looks at the Legal Regimes on Land-Based Marine Pollution Sources and the Social Economic Wellbeing of the Coastal Communities in Rivers State. This article found that the sea and the oceans of the world are governed by international laws and that there are domestic legal and regulatory frameworks governing marine pollutions in Nigeria particularly pollution arising in the areas within national jurisdiction. However, stakeholders in the sector have not been properly put together to play their expected roles in ensuring for attitudinal changes of our communities in dumping waste and plastic litters into creeks and seas. The article recommends that there should be strengthened campaigns and sensitization exercises of stakeholder on the need to take to a new approach in waste disposal to avoid dumping into our creeks, introduce economic and financial systems to promote sustainable investing in the marine sector, strengthen all environmental protection agencies and to scale up trade in alternatives to plastic.
