Legal Regime Of The Sea Bed And The Developing Countries

Antarctica & the Southern Ocean cover one-tenth of the earth's surface. In a legal & environmental sense, Antarctica represents the geography of hope. It is the freshest & most pristine of regions, governed by a legal regime that offers Antarctica & its circumpolar water the unique possibility of becoming the world's first global wilderness preserve. But in today's age of resource scarcity, Antarctica still provokes much political, economic & legal debate. Over the past decade, international attention has increasingly focused on the legal status of the continent, the potential for hydrocarbon exploitation offshore, & opportunities for harvesting circumpolar living marine resources. In this fascinating treatment, Christopher C. Joyner undertakes the first serious examination of the intimate relationship between Antarctica & the law of the sea. Using Antarctica as a case study, Joyner probes large conceptual issues of ocean law & politics. He uses the intricate details of oceanography & law to unravel the dynamics of the Antarctic Treaty System. In doing so, he examines how the changing importance of Antarctic issues has affected the development of the law of the sea for the region, the ways in which states define their national interests, & the accommodation through various negotations that have contributed to the development of law for governing the Southern Ocean. While the study of law for the Antarctic is provocative in itself, this work goes much farther. The study critically analyzes the region's biogeography, the condition of sovereignty on the continent, the lawfulness of asserting jurisdictional zones offshore, & various legal implications for Antarctica's continental shelf, local island groups, circumpolar deep seabed, & the Southern Ocean's high seas. Moreover, the special legal efforts by the international community to protect the Antarctic seas from marine pollution & to conserve its living marine resources are comprehensively appraised. Thorough, authoritative, & objectively reasoned, Antarctica & the Law of the Sea provides an insightful assessment of how law can progressively develop for a resource-rich region of the world's ocean. As such, it should appeal to a broad range of international lawyers & social scientists who are interested in international relations, political economy, environmental politics, & the law of the sea.

This three-volume work is concerned with the rules of international law governing the exploitation of the energy and mineral resources to be found on and under the sea-bed. Volume 3 complements the previous two volumes by making available a selection of the principal documents referred to in volume 1 The Continental Shelf and volume 2 Sea-Bed Mining. The documents are arranged in three Parts. Part 1 includes document on the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone; Part 2 covers the United Nations regime for the Area beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, including the landmark Mining Code adopted in July 2000; and Part 3 has a selection of national legislation on sea-bed mining and related co-ordinating treaties. Also included is a table showing the status, as at 1 October 2000, of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982 and the 1994 Agreement relating to the Implementation of the UN Convention. This volume will be a useful practical tool for academics, practitioners, and policy-makers concerned with the legal regime governing sea-bed energy and minerals and presents a carefully selected set of documents indispensable for a full understanding of the regimes analysed in the earlier volumes.