On the Legal Path for the Unified Regulation of Marine Use Certificates and Aquaculture Certificates for Waters and Tidal Flats

Abstract

With the continuous and rapid development of China’s marine economy, aquaculture activities in the sea are becoming increasingly frequent. As two core legal certificates, the Sea Area Use Certificate and the Aquaculture Use Right Certificate play a crucial role in the management of marine resources. However, the current management model of the two certificates being separate has gradually exposed a series of problems, such as ambiguous rights nature, overlapping approval procedures, and high administrative costs. This paper systematically reviews the legal sources and practical status of the two certificates, and on this basis, proposes legal paths such as legislative integration to clarify the nature of rights, optimizing the approval process and promoting simultaneous issuance of certificates, and building a departmental collaboration and information sharing platform, to promote the integration of the two certificates from procedural coordination to substantive unification, providing legal support and institutional design references for optimizing the marine governance system and promoting the high-quality development of the blue economy.