Who resolves Arctic oil disputes?
Antarctica provides a model for settling competing claims.
from the August 20, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Such claims are legitimate under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which lets states make claims beyond 200 nautical miles if the seabed is shown to be an extension of their continental shelf. All the potential claimants except the US have ratified the convention.
The convention has time limits for making claims, based on when they ratified the treaty. Russia, which did so early, submitted a claim to the North Pole and 1.2 million square kilometers of seabed in 2001, alleging that the underwater Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of its continental shelf. Canada and Denmark have until 2013 and 2014, respectively, to submit counterclaims. The US will have 10 years to claim a large area adjacent to the Alaskan shelf once it ratifies the treaty.
Does Russia's flag mean anything?
In legal terms, no. Under the Law of the Sea, it's geology, not flag planting, that matters, which is why Russia, Denmark, the US, and Canada are all dispatching survey ships to the region.
"Natural features of the seabed have to be understood and mapped very carefully," to substantiate that it is an extension of a country's continental shelf, says Lindsay Parson of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England.
Nonetheless, the flag planting was a powerful symbolic act, says Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School, who believes power, not international law, will settle the issue. "Russia really meant something when it planted the flag: that it is taking the Arctic carve-up very seriously," he says, noting that Moscow's fleet of heavy icebreakers is second to none. "Russia is positioning itself to take the lion's share. If the US and Canada don't make serious investments in ships that can patrol the Arctic, then Russia will have no reason to back down and will just go with the biggest possible claim."
Who decides claims?
Claims beyond 200 nautical miles are reviewed by a group of 21 scientists who sit on the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, a body created by the Law of the Sea Convention. "The commission will be facing very, very significant workload issues in the next while because many countries will be turning in claims," says Donald Rothwell of the Australian National University in Canberra. "An already lengthy process could take longer."
RSS feed
