Revision of U.S. can make claim to Arctic resources without being party to UNCLOS from Tue, 04/15/2014 - 23:49
As it has done for quite a long time, the United States may rely on the doctrine of the freedom of the high seas codified in the 1958 Convention on the High Seas to assert that it is permitted to mine and navigate in the Arctic region.
Quicktabs: Arguments
What of the Arctic? A 2011 Bloomberg BusinessWeek editorial argued:
“The U.S. continental shelf off Alaska extends more than 600 miles into the Arctic Ocean. American companies have been reluctant to invest in exploiting this underwater terrain, which contains vast untapped reserves of oil and natural gas. That’s because the U.S., as a nonparticipant in the sea convention, has no standing to defend its ownership of any treasures that are found there.”32
Yet this is exactly the same case as in the Gulf of Mexico. Only three nations contest the ownership of resources in the extended North American continental shelf in the Arctic: the United States, Canada and Russia. American relations with Canada are friendly; therefore, a United States-Mexico-style treaty with Canada demarcating appropriate lines north of Alaska should be relatively easy to achieve. Russia might be perceived as a more intractable problem; but a 1990 treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union defines the maritime boundary between the two powers.33
Under the Treaty, Russia has claimed vast areas beneath the Arctic Ocean, but these claims in no way infringe upon the 1990 Treaty. Actually, they are a challenge to Canada rather than the United States. South of the Arctic Ocean, the treaty line protects U.S. claims to large areas of extended continental shelf in the Bering Sea and in the Pacific Ocean southwest of the Alaskan Aleutian Islands. Accordingly, there is no barrier (barring the low one of a necessity to negotiate a treaty with Canada) to the United States developing the extended continental shelf in the Arctic and its environs in the same way it has in the Western Gap.
LOST in the Arctic. The U.S. Arctic Region Pol- icy urges the Senate to approve U.S. accession to LOST. However, the U.S. can execute its Arctic policy without ratifying LOST.
At present, America is not bound by the treaty’s procedures and strictures, but the U.S. is pursuing its claims under international law as an indepen- dent, sovereign nation, relying on President Harry S. Truman’s Presidential Proclamation No. 2667, which declares that any hydrocarbon or other resources discovered beneath the U.S. continental shelf are the property of the United States.4 The U.S. has shown that it can successfully defend its rights and claims through bilateral negotiations and in multi- lateral venues, such as through the Arctic Ocean Conference, which met in Greenland in May 2008.
Is having a seat on the46 "U.S. Ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea: Passive Acceptance Is Not Enough to Protect U.S. Property Interests ." North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation. Vol. 31, No. 3 (2005-2006): 745-792. [ More (7 quotes) ] CLCS an important enough reason to join the Convention? Would having a seat on the CLCS really put the United States Government in a position to have a say in deliberations over other nations’ extended continental shelf claims? Again, the answer to both of those questions is, “no.” The CLCS was established to help facilitate the implementation of Article 76. As a body of scientific experts, however, the CLCS does not have veto power over coastal state submissions. It may only make rec- ommendations to the coastal state on matters related to the establishment of the outer limits of its continental shelf. Coastal states may accept or reject these recommendations. Annex II (Article 8) to the Convention and CLCS Rules of Procedure (Rule 53) simply require the coastal state to make a revised or new submission in the case of disagreement with the recommen- dations of the Commission. Additionally, Annex II (Article 2) limits the membership of the CLCS to 21 experts, so there is no guarantee that a U.S. representative would be elected to the Commission even if the United States was a party to the Convention. Moreover, even if elected, the U.S. repre- sentative would serve in a personal capacity (Annex II, Article 2(1); CLCS Rules of Procedure (Rule 11)) and would be precluded from voting on any submission tendered by the United States (Annex II, Article 5; CLCS Rules of Procedure (Rule 42)). Having a seat at the table on the CLCS would not put the U.S. Government in a position to have a say in deliberations over other nations’ claims and would therefore have minimal benefit for the United States.