1. GEOPOLITICS: As the planet heats up, so do long-slumbering legal disputes (ClimateWire, 06/13/2008)

Nathanial Gronewold, ClimateWire reporter

NEW YORK -- This week, the United Nations was the forum for a last-ditch effort to resolve a little-known international dispute between the tiny African nations of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. The aim is to once and for all resolve ownership of the tiny uninhabited islands of Cocotier, Conga and Mbanié off the two nations' coasts, through a mediation effort launched by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and since adopted by his successor Ban Ki-moon.

The rich resources that could potentially lie offshore from these minor islands explains why the two countries continue to fight so hard for their control, with an early tentative agreement in 2004 having collapsed. The exploitation of oil and gas deposits in Equatorial Guinea's territorial waters has proven a boon to the tiny country, making it sub-Saharan Africa's third largest oil producer, though very few of its citizens ever see the wealth.

A territorial battle between two small and impoverished nations may seem to mean little in the grand scheme of things. But global warming is making the business of settling gnarly disputes like this a huge undertaking. It has set some of the world's largest and wealthiest nations on a collision course, resurrecting conflicting land and maritime boundary claims that have stayed dormant for decades.

Various explorers have tried these routes through the Northwest Passage, one of the more disputed areas. Map courtesy of NASA.

Just as the physics, chemistry and biology of global warming are expected to have their greatest impact at the earth's poles, the legal machinations involved in these international disputes will be felt most acutely there, as well.

The United States and Canada have still not finally settled on where their Arctic maritime boundary lies, although they have reconciled some differences in the area. Milder winters and diminishing sea ice are opening up these areas to potential mineral and hydrocarbon extraction, just at the moment when demand for such resources has never been greater.

Who owns Hans?

Canada and Greenland, administered by Denmark, are increasingly coming into conflict over which nation owns the small, frozen island of Hans north of the Arctic Circle. As the ice melts, Greenland's map must be redrawn every year, and the government is keenly eyeing its potential to become a resource powerhouse. Meanwhile, Canada is bolstering its military presence in the north, as it is particularly concerned that the United States and other nations will take advantage of the opening of the Northwest Passage, which it claims as its own territorial waters.

Norway and Russia have yet to delineate their maritime border in the Barents Sea, which holds rich oil and natural gas deposits and is becoming more accessible as temperatures rise. Both nations are eager to get on with exploiting the resources in their northern fringes, which means sooner or later the dispute will have to be resolved.

Many, including some officials with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, fear that booming energy and resource demand, coupled with climate change, will increasingly bring powerful nations into conflict with one another, with unknown and perhaps even dangerous consequences. Luckily, many of the rules for resolving territorial claims have already been drawn up and handed to the United Nations to manage. But the system is still limited by the willingness of powerful states to subject themselves to U.N. arbitration.

Most of the fresh claims to territory that nations make these days concern the ocean bottom; specifically, the seabed of the outer continental shelf lying beyond a state's 200-mile economic zone of control. The rules governing when and how a nation can stake claim to this area are spelled out in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a massive international treaty that governs everything from navigation rights to how undersea cables can be laid.

Harry S. Truman set the stage for settlement

Ironically, while the United States is still not a full member of the Law of the Sea, the idea that a state can claim control to the outer continental shelf originated there. President Harry Truman set the whole thing off in his proclamation of Sept. 28, 1945, when he laid claim to much of North America's continental shelf for the United States, the first time anyone had done so.

He inspired the laws that define offshore holdings, but the United States has some reservations. Photo courtesy of the Truman Library.

Truman set the precedent for future ocean law when he stated to the world that the United States "regards the natural resources of the subsoil and seabed of the continental shelf beneath the high seas but contiguous to the coast of the United States as appertaining to the United States, subject to its jurisdiction and control." Truman's reasoning, as laid out in his proclamation, was based on the idea that "the continental shelf may be regarded as an extension of the landmass of the coast nation, and thus a natural appurtenant to it."

This argument was given further legal grounding under the 1958 Geneva Convention and subsequently held up by the International Court of Justice on Feb. 20, 1969. The rules determining a "continental shelf" -- a more legal than geographic definition for international legal purposes -- were ultimately finalized in 1982 when the Law of the Sea was completed.

The Law of the Sea established the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) as the ultimate arbiter of nations' claims to extended ocean territory. This little-known panel of 21 oceanographers, hydrographers and seafloor geologists has already seen claims for disputed territory come across its desk. But powerful U.N. member states, fearful that a bunch of scientists could thwart their claims of sovereignty over certain chunks of the world, carefully tailored the rules so that CLCS authority becomes null and void whenever two Law of the Sea members disagree on a claim.

But big nations won't submit their claims for resolution

Such disputes are already coming into play at the United Nations. The United Kingdom had planned to stake claim to ocean bottom off the coast of the Falkland Islands, as it has done for other remnants of its overseas empire. But Argentina calls the islands the Malvinas and claims them as its own. Argentina's obstruction keeps the CLCS out of the picture.

Likewise, Japan objected to the very fist submission made to the CLCS, the one by Russia back in 2001. The dispute was over who controls the Kuril Islands off Japan's north coast, which were seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.

"It is Japan's view that the maps containing the islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and Habomai ... attached to the submission made by the Russian Federation are not appropriate for examination by the commission," Tokyo complained shortly after Moscow applied for control of some ocean bottom near the area. "The exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf around the four islands ... are inherent Japanese territory."

But that dispute is relatively inconsequential compared to one of the largest unresolved international legal issues: Russia's claim to a massive stretch of the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, covering an area roughly the size of France and even encompassing the bottom of the North Pole.

On hold since 2002, Russia is determined to reapply as early as this year and ultimately win the prize, especially as Arctic temperatures warm and the waters grow more accessible. But it will likely first have to overcome objections by the three nations most immediately affected -- Norway, Denmark and Canada.

"We have problems of delimiting the limits of the continental shelf with Canada and Denmark, which acts on behalf of Greenland," admits Yuri Kazmin, a member of the CLCS who also works as an ocean floor geologist for Russia's oil industry and has studied the area in question. "We have the area that may be claimed by those two governments."

The dispute extends well beyond Norway's competing claims to maritime territory in the Barents Sea. Two undersea geologic features central to Russia's claim could also theoretically be claimed by Canada and Denmark under CLCS rules. The United States could also become entangled if it were to ever join the Law of the Sea convention.

"In the Arctic area we have [the] Lomonosov Ridge, which goes across the Arctic area toward the continental margin of Greenland, and ... the Mendeleev Ridge, which goes to the Canadian [formation] known as Alpha Ridge," said Kazmin. "Another elevation is Chukchi plateau, which is actually the extension of the continental margin of the United States."

The speed at which nations reacted to Russia's claim is a testament to the extreme sensitivity felt over the polar regions' riches. Norway, for instance, quickly filed a communique to the United Nations noting that "the delimitation of the continental shelf between Norway and the Russian Federation has not yet been settled and is the subject of ongoing consultation." Oslo demanded that the CLCS consider the Barents portion of Russia's request "as a maritime dispute" and demanded that no action be taken.

A global wrangle over Antarctica

But the negative response to Russia's Arctic land grab was outweighed by reactions to a claim issued by Australia back in 2004.

Back then, Canberra boldly and somewhat provocatively requested recognition of the "Australian Antarctic Territory" and the extended continental shelf it said it had mapped off the coast of the southernmost landmass. Not to be outdone, New Zealand followed suit with its own Antarctic claim two years later.

The move is in apparent contradiction to the Antarctic Treaty, which entered into force in 1961 and suspends all territorial claims on the continent. So shortly after Australia issued its application, replete with maps and detailed coordinates outlining the boundary of its territorial claim, the United States, Russia, Germany, Japan, India and the Netherlands all objected in short order. Japan also issued an objection to New Zealand's claim.

"The United States does not recognize any states' claim to territory in Antarctica and consequently does not recognize any states' rights over the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas beyond and adjacent to the continent of Antarctica," Washington told the United Nations in its protest letter.

But other states, particularly France and the United Kingdom, largely supported Australia's move, feeling that it could only bolster their claims to slices of Antarctica and the claims to adjacent coastal regions both countries have said they intend to make.

"France has no objection to the commission considering and making recommendations on those parts of Australia's submission that concern areas bordering on French territories," including Antarctic territory, wrote Paris' ambassador to the United Nations.

In the spirit of international cooperation, Australia has accepted that the CLCS will ignore the Antarctic portion of its claim for the time being, happy that the rest of it was approved a few months ago by the CLCS, paving the way for Canberra to prospect for oil, natural gas and mineral deposits far from its shores.

Other nations are apparently following suit. Last month, the United Kingdom told the CLCS that its pending request for recognition of ocean subsurfaces would also include claim to offshore portions of Antarctica, but that it understands that that part "would not be examined by [the CLCS] for the time being."

But as climate change continues to alter polar environments and the global scramble for resources intensifies, the issue of who controls Antarctica will eventually come up again. In December 2009 the Smithsonian Institution in Washington will host the Antarctic Treaty Summit to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the accord. The treaty itself will be open to amendments in 2011. The half-dozen nations claiming ownership of various slices of Antarctica could press for greater recognition of the claims then.

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