The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea sought to establish a definition of the continental shelf that would accommodate the interests of a number, albeit a minority, of coastal States. This included consideration of various submarine elevations, including ridges, and their relationship to the regime of the continental shelf. For a variety of reasons, submarine and oceanic ridges have proved to be contentious. Indeed, this chapter proved to be the most difficult of all the chapters in this book to obtain a text to which all the authors, scientists, and lawyers could agree. Therefore, rather than produce an anodyne chapter which might have summarized only those areas of agreement, we considered it best to also cover areas where agreement was lacking. This provides the reader with both sides of the argument and the opportunity to reach their own view on the basis of the evidence presented. Some of the contentious areas are . . . i. Whether or not article 76 should be interpreted in such a manner as to preclude a country situated on a ridge from having a continental shelf beyond 200 M. ii. Whether bathymetry (reflecting geomorphology) should be given more or less weight than, or the same weight as geology in any consideration of a continental shelf beyond 200 M, including extension along an oceanic ridge, iii. Whether the fact that article 76 refers to the continental shelf being a natural prolongation of the land territory "to the outer edge of the continental margin" means that it can (or cannot) be applied to an island sitting on top of an oceanic ridge, iv. Whether or not article 76 can be interpreted in such a way as to allow a coastal State to "jump" its claim from the margin onto an adjacent ridge. v. Whether or not article 76 limits the use of ridges so that coastal States do not unreasonably extend their continental shelf regime. . . . Ultimately, for the answers to these questions, the reader will need to look to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (the Commission), together with the outcome of diplomacy.
Indonesia's Perspective