Abstract
This article seeks to contribute to the emerging literature concerning the application of belligerent occupation in maritime zones of the occupied State. It supports the approach that the law of occupation and the law of the sea apply simultaneously in case of occupation of coastal States, offering a new perspective on the jurisdiction of the occupying power to exploit marine resources in the occupied State’s continental shelf and exclusive economic zone. This perspective highlights some issues that have been ignored in the literature thus far to better understand the rights and obligations of the relevant Parties with respect to maritime zones of the occupied State.
This chapter discusses international law governing territorial sea delimitation, continental shelf delimitation (including beyond 200 nm), exclusive economic zone delimitation, and the effect of islands upon delimitation.
Since 1945, the legal jurisdiction off the coasts of States has changed from being a 3 mile territorial sea to a series of bands of territorial sea, contiguous zone, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf. The paper summarizes the historical development of these zones. Now that Canada has submitted its claim for continental shelves beyond the 200 nautical mile (NM) limit to the United Nations’ Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), the author calculates estimates for the size of Canada’s continental shelf beyond 200 NMs in both the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and assesses the effect of the counter-claims by its neighboring States.
The Application of the Precautionary and Adaptive Management Approaches in the Seabed Mining Context: Trans-Tasman Resources Ltd Marine Consent Decision under New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012
