Abstract: Whether or not there are “shortcomings” in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) depends of course on one's view of the adequacy or desirability of the current law, and that in turn depends on one's views of what the current law is. Before I comment on that, it is useful to first summarize what we are talking about, and that is what the consequences are of a rising sea level for the location and extent of maritime jurisdictional areas. And here a distinction must be made between (1) areas that have been delimited between two coastal states by a boundary agreement or a decision by an international court or tribunal, and (2) areas where either there are no adjacent or opposite other coastal states or no delimitation has yet taken place. The first situation in my view does not raise any problems because, in brief, under general international law such boundaries are permanent unless the parties agree to change the existing boundary. Much more can be said about this but there is no time to delve into that area. The second situation is more complicated. Here the international law on “baselines” (in combination with the law on extent and limits of maritime jurisdictional zones) is decisive. A distinction must then be made between the “normal” baseline and artificial baselines (straight baselines, UNCLOS Article 7; and archipelagic baselines, UNCLOS Article 47). I will now concentrate on the “normal” baseline and leave the somewhat more technical issues of straight and archipelagic baselines aside.
Publication Year: 2020
Publication Date: 2020-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot