New Scientist - USA (2020-11-07)

40 | New Scientist | 7 November 2020

area is usually divided down the middle.

All this helps explain disputes over the

sovereignty of specks of land such as the

Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Any

country that can claim an island potentially

gets the territorial waters and EEZ around it –

and may also reduce the zones of other

countries if there is an overlap.

It doesn’t explain what’s happening in

the Arctic, though. Rights to that territory

are determined by additional rules agreed

in UNCLOS. These allow countries to claim

rights to sea-floor mineral resources out to

either 350 nautical miles (648 kilometres)

from their coast, or 100 nautical miles

(185 kilometres) beyond the 2500 metre

depth contour where the sea floor slopes

away from the land, whichever applies first.

According to these rules, a country must

submit a case with geological evidence and

detailed sea-floor maps showing that the area

is an extension of its continental shelf. In the

Arctic, a relatively shallow stretch of sea floor

called the Lomonosov Ridge runs across the

ocean basin. Russia, Canada and Denmark,

by way of Greenland, can all claim that this

feature extends their continental shelves into

the central Arctic. All three have submitted

their cases to the UN Commission on the

Limits of the Continental Shelf: Denmark

in 2014, Russia in 2015 and Canada in 2018.

“What looks at first glance like this

acquisitive scramble for the Arctic, with

everyone just claiming what they can, is

actually states doing what they’re supposed

to do,” says Philip Steinberg, director of

the International Boundaries Research

Unit at Durham University, UK, “They are

submitting the science that UNCLOS tells

them to.”

The areas claimed by Russia, Canada

and Denmark overlap, so they will have to

negotiate boundaries between themselves.

But that is a problem for the future. Claims

over the Arctic may have been making the

headlines, but the same process is happening

around the globe and there is a backlog of

cases waiting to be reviewed by the UN. “It

will be maybe 20 to 30 years before they get to

all the submissions that are currently before

them – and there are still more coming in,”

says Steinberg.

That still leaves a vast expanse of ocean

beyond the reach of individual nations. This

region, which covers about 46 per cent of

Earth’s surface, is known as the “high seas”

or “the Area”. In the 1960s, the UN designated

the resources here as the “common heritage

of mankind”. This principle is the cornerstone

of its International Seabed Authority (ISA),

JAS

ON

FO

RD

“ Most resources on the sea floor are

deemed ‘common heritage’ for all”