International law, Sixth edition
party’s side of the maritime boundary in order to ensure that all areas
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International Law MALCOLM N. SHAW
- Bu sahifa navigatsiya:
- The continental shelf
party’s side of the maritime boundary in order to ensure that all areas within 200 miles of either party’s coast would fall within the resource jurisdiction of one party or the other. It would appear that jurisdiction over three special areas within the USSR’s 200-mile economic zone and one special area within the US’s 200-mile economic zone were so trans- ferred. 140 The continental shelf 141 The continental shelf is a geological expression referring to the ledges that project from the continental landmass into the seas and which are covered with only a relatively shallow layer of water (some 150–200 metres) and which eventually fall away into the ocean depths (some thousands of metres deep). These ledges or shelves take up some 7 to 8 per cent of the total area of ocean and their extent varies considerably from place to place. Off the western coast of the United States, for instance, it is less than 5 miles wide, while, on the other hand, the whole of the underwater area of the North Sea and Persian Gulf consists of shelf. The vital fact about the continental shelves is that they are rich in oil and gas resources and quite often are host to extensive fishing grounds. 139 O’Connell, International Law of the Sea, vol. I, p. 578, note 95 regarding North Korea’s proclamation of a 50-mile security zone in 1977. See also Cumulative DUSPIL 1981–8, vol. II, pp. 1750 ff. detailing US practice objecting to peacetime security or military zones. Note also the establishment of the ‘exclusion zone’ around the Falkland Islands in 1982: see 22 HC Deb., cols. 296–7, 28 April 1982. See e.g. R. P. Barston and P. W. Birnie, ‘The Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas Conflict. A Question of Zones’, 7 Marine Policy, 1983, p. 14. 140 84 AJIL, 1990, pp. 885–7. 141 See e.g. Brown, International Law of the Sea, vol. I, chapters 10 and 11; O’Connell, Inter- national Law of the Sea, vol. I, chapter 13; Churchill and Lowe, Law of the Sea, chapter 8; Z. J. Slouka, International Custom and the Continental Shelf, The Hague, 1968; C. Vall´ee, Le Plateau Continental dans le Droit International Positif, Paris, 1971; V. Marotta Rangel, ‘Le Plateau Continental dans la Convention de 1982 sur le Droit de la Mer’, 194 HR, 1985 V, p. 269, and H. Lauterpacht, ‘Sovereignty over Submarine Areas’, 27 BYIL, 1950, p. 376. See also Oppenheim’s International Law, p. 764, and Nguyen Quoc Dinh et al., Droit International Public, p. 1183. t h e l aw o f t h e s e a 585 This stimulated a round of appropriations by coastal states in the years following the Second World War, which gradually altered the legal status of the continental shelf from being part of the high seas and available for exploitation by all states until its current recognition as exclusive to the coastal state. The first move in this direction, and the one that led to a series of similar and more extensive claims, was the Truman Proclamation of 1945. 142 This pointed to the technological capacity to exploit the riches of the shelf and the need to establish a recognised jurisdiction over such resources, and declared that the coastal state was entitled to such jurisdiction for a number of reasons: first, because utilisation or conservation of the resources of the subsoil and seabed of the conti- nental shelf depended upon co-operation from the shore; secondly, be- cause the shelf itself could be regarded as an extension of the land mass of the coastal state, and its resources were often merely an extension into the sea of deposits lying within the territory; and finally, because the coastal state, for reasons of security, was profoundly interested in activi- ties off its shores which would be necessary to utilise the resources of the shelf. Accordingly, the US government proclaimed that it regarded the ‘natu- ral resources of the subsoil and seabed of the continental shelf beneath the high seas but contiguous to the coasts of the United States as appertaining to the United States, subject to its jurisdiction and control’. However, this would in no way affect the status of the waters above the continental shelf as high seas. This proclamation precipitated a whole series of claims by states to their continental shelves, some in similar terms to the US assertions, and others in substantially wider terms. Argentina and El Salvador, for example, claimed not only the shelf but also the waters above and the airspace. Chile and Peru, having no continental shelf to speak of, claimed sovereignty over the seabed, subsoil and waters around their coasts to a limit of 200 miles, although this occasioned vigorous protests by many states. 143 The problems were discussed over many years, leading to the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf. 144 142 Whiteman, Digest, vol. IV, p. 756. 143 Download 7.77 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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