Revision of U.S. can make claim to Arctic resources without being party to UNCLOS from Tue, 10/17/2017 - 16:07
Quicktabs: Arguments
However, pursuant to long-standing law and policy the United States already enjoys and exercises full jurisdiction and control over its ECS. In addition to the 1945 Truman Proclamation, in which President Harry S. Truman declared that the United States “regards the natural resources of the subsoil and sea bed 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,” in 1953 Congress passed the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which defined the outer continental shelf as “all submerged lands lying seaward and outside of the area of lands beneath navigable waters...and of which the subsoil and seabed appertain to the United States and are subject to its jurisdiction and control.”
After the adoption of UNCLOS in 1982, the U.S. affirmed its jurisdiction over its entire continental shelf, including the ECS. Specifically, in November 1987 a U.S. government interagency group issued a policy statement declaring its intent to delimit the U.S. ECS in conformity with Article 76 of UNCLOS (which provides a formula for measuring the extent of a coastal state’s ECS). That statement read, in pertinent part, “The United States has exercised and shall continue to exercise jurisdiction over its continental shelf in accordance with and to the full extent permitted by international law as reflected in Article 76, paragraphs (1), (2) and (3).”
Indeed, after Russia made its 2001 claim, five nations (Canada, Denmark, Japan, Norway, and the United States) submitted objections to the CLCS. The U.S. objection identified “major flaws” in the Russian claim, including an objection concerning whether the Alpha-Mendeleev and Lomonosov mid-ocean ridges in the central Arctic are a natural component of Russia’s continental shelf. However, the U.S. comments also noted that “the Russian submission utilizes the boundary embodied” in the 1990 U.S.–USSR treaty and that the “use of that boundary is consistent with the mutual interests of Russia and the United States in stability of expectations.”36
The CLCS agreed with the U.S. comments, stating that the U.S.– USSR boundary demarcated in 1990 reflects the boundary of the U.S.–Russia continental shelf in the Bering Sea. The CLCS recom- mended that Russia “transmit to the Commission the charts and coordinates of the delimitation lines as they would represent the outer limits of the continental shelf of the Russian Federation extended beyond 200 nautical miles in ... the Bering Sea.”37
In June 2002, in light of the objections to Russia’s ECS claim, the CLCS recommended to the Russians that they provide a “revised submission” on Russia’s claims in the central Arctic.38 Russia reportedly will make an amended submission to the CLCS at some point in the future. In addition, Canada and Russia recently signaled that they will cooperate with each other to demarcate their respective ECS boundaries in the Arctic.39
The U.S. objections to the Russian ECS submission and the CLCS’s subsequent rejection of the Russian claim call into question the repeated assertions by UNCLOS proponents that, absent U.S. accession to the convention, the United States is a helpless bystander in demarcation of Arctic ECS boundaries.40 In fact, the United States has raised objections to the CLCS on other ECS submissions, such as those made by Australia and Brazil.41
Much of the supposed distress voiced by UNCLOS proponents stems from Russia’s 2001 submission to the CLCS, in which Russia laid claim to a vast area of Arctic ECS. The proponents incorrectly imply that Russia’s claim will result in the loss of Arctic resources that rightfully belong to the United States. According to Senator Lisa Murkowski (R–AK), for example:
[I]f we do not become a party to the treaty, our opportunity to make [a claim to the CLCS] and have the international community respect it diminishes considerably, as does our ability to prevent claims like Russia’s from coming into fruition. Not only is this a negligent forfeiture of valuable oil, gas and mineral deposits, but also the ability to perform critical scientific research.30
However, Russia’s 2001 submission to the CLCS in no way overlaps or infringes on potential areas of U.S. ECS in the Arctic. To the contrary, Russia’s claim adheres to a boundary line that the United States and the USSR agreed upon in a 1990 treaty.31 Specifically, Russia’s submission to the CLCS divides its claimed conti- nental shelf and ECS from the U.S. shelf along an agreed boundary line that extends from the Bering Strait northward into the Arctic Ocean.