Recent News
An examination of the ideological bias of the Republican party against international treaties, including UNCLOS.
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China's deep-sea manned submersible today carried out its first dive in the southwest Indian Ocean to look for deposits of copper, zinc and other precious metals.
[ More ]China’s position paper published on December 7, 2014 is one of the rare documents in which Beijing officially expressed its opinions on the issues in the South China Sea, but may be driving the US and ASEAN into a ‘juridical alliance.’
[ More ]Denmark has laid claim to the North Pole, saying that under UNCLOS, some 900,000 square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland belongs to it (Greenland is a self-governing part of Denmark).
[ More ]The historic legal battle between the Philippines and China over disputed territories in the South China Sea has entered a new phase. There are renewed risks of escalation. In recent days, China, the United States and Vietnam have all expressed their position on the legal aspects of the maritime spats in the Western Pacific.
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The world’s first deep-sea mine will open in 2018 in the waters off Papua New Guinea, with purpose-built machinery to extract precious metals from the sea bed.
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The United States needs more icebreakers. The country has a growing national interest in the Arctic, and its relations with Russia, a dominant force in the region, are increasingly chilly. Yet Washington is woefully unprepared for the Arctic challenge when it comes to one crucial tool: the mighty nuclear-powered vessels that would support its economic and security objectives in the high north.
[ More ]One of Russia’s fundamental national priorities is developing hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic zone, but the lack of infrastructure, technological backwardness, incompetence in handling oil spills in icy conditions and even sanctions imposed on Moscow by the west are not as threatening to these federal initiative as are the falling price of oil.
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The author evaluates whether the recent increase in Russian militarization of the Arctic poses a threat to the security or environment of the Arctic region.
[ More ]Mining phosphate on the Chatham Rise, off the east coast of New Zealand’s south island, could potentially have many impacts on marine mammals like whales and dolphins, the Environmental Protection Agency was told today.
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