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The seabed has long been an unexplored area and we still do not have all the information about its environment. In the second half of the 20th century, the development of technology allowed a better exploration of the seabed. There have been discovered seamounts, hydrothermal vents and other formations. Around these formations there are rich ecosystems that are currently threatened by mining, deep-sea fishing, bioprospecting and deep-sea tourism. Most of the seabed is beyond the area of national jurisdiction and currently there is no legal convention aimed at protecting this area. This thesis explains the concept of biodiversity, its significance and threats. The main legal instruments for the protection of the seabed biodiversity are analysed. These include the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the so-called Constitution for the oceans. At the time of the adoption of this Convention, activities on the seabed were still being developed. The UNCLOS Convention therefore regulates only the activities of exploration for and exploitation of the resources on the seabed beyond national jurisdiction, in the Area. The importance of the UNCLOS Convention for the protection of the marine environment was therefore limited. Due to the activities of The International Seabed Authority and The...

Dustin Breitling Thesis Advisor: Martin Riegl, PhD. Small Island Developing States and Statehood Abstract: The spate of warnings that have been issued concerning Climate Change and its damaging impact upon the livelihood of populations has garnered increasing acknowledgement and critical concern. In a century where the potential for states to be submerged, concerns are being raised about how states, especially Small Island Developing States, are susceptible to losing Statehood. Small Island Developing States are already being ravaged by higher sea levels and dramatic loss of livelihood through inundation and potential submergence of their territory by the end of the century. Already these concerns are catalyzing Small Island Developing States to seek out alternative arrangements for their populations and importantly to preserve their legal personality. These arrangements tie in decisive concerns that connect how States are understood within in the international community as possessing a permanent territory, effective governance, permanent population and the capacity to be recognized by others. The angle offered and explored here becomes what happens once a permanent territory is undermined by seawaters and populations are relocated to Host States. If these issues are bound to occur then can historical...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse which navigational rights are applicable to foreign commercial vessels performing trans-arctic shipping through the Northwest Passage and how this affects the potential for Canada, through article 234 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to issue national environmental legislation regulating pollution from ships. This is done through the method of legal dogmatics, characterised by analysis of the sources of law and the hierarchy between them. In this paper, the main sources of law employed are UNCLOS and relevant case law from the International Court of Justice. The main conclusions presented in the paper are that the Northwest Passage consists of a combination of territorial sea and exclusive economic zone, which generally means that commercial vessels are allowed innocent passage through the parts of the passage forming the territorial sea and are largely subject to freedom of navigation through those parts that form the exclusive economic zone. However, it seems likely that the Northwest Passage is a strait used for international navigation, in which case, the vessels passing through it are instead subject to the regime of transit passage. This would negatively affect the possibility for Canada to issue national legislation to regulate pollution from foreign vessels. However, as long as the Northwest Passage is covered by ice for most of the year, article 234 UNCLOS allows Canada far more leeway in regard to issuing anti-pollution legislation, both in the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone, regardless of whether the Northwest Passage is found to be a strait used for international navigation. The passage regime applicable to foreign commercial vessels under article 234 could be characterised as a sui generis passage.

This thesis seeks to systematically examine the contributions made by the dispute settlement bodies established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to the development of the law of the sea. The two main research questions to be answered are: (i) what kind of contribution have UNCLOS dispute settlement bodies made to the development of the law of the sea? and (ii) what are the factors that impact the performance of UNCLOS dispute settlement bodies in developing the law of the sea? To that end, Chapter 1 provides a working definition for the concept of 'judicial development of international law' in order to establish a framework for an assessment of the contributions of UNCLOS tribunals. Based on this working definition, Chapters 2, 3 and 4 examine the significance of UNCLOS tribunals' decisions in the development of three main areas of the law of the sea, respectively the law on fisheries, the law on the outer continental shelf and the law on marine environmental protection. Based on the findings of these chapters, Chapter 5 analyses the factors that help explain the contributions of UNCLOS tribunals to the law of the sea as identified in the preceding chapters. These factors include: (i) the jurisdictional scope of UNCLOS tribunals, (ii) the institutional design of UNCLOS, (iii) the interpretative method employed by UNCLOS tribunals in deciding their cases and (iv) the perception that UNCLOS tribunals hold regarding their roles. Chapter 6 concludes by taking stock of the contribution of UNCLOS tribunal in these areas and offering some final observations on the role of UNCLOS tribunals in the development of the law of the sea.

The IPCC report from 2013 predicts radical temperature changes in the world the coming years, with a melting ice cap in the Arctic as consequence. According to geological research made by institutes and scholars from the Arctic states the Arctic is likely to hold the last remaining oil and gas resources of the world. The melting ice cap opens up for resource exploitation and for new naval transportation routes between Asia and Europe and North America. There is a debate over what geopolitical implications these natural resources and the new transportation routes will get for the surrounding Arctic states since the existing international regulations in some areas are inadequate. This debate is divided into two camps; one side argues that the Arctic states will act cooperatively when exploiting the resources and navigating the new transportation routes, while the other side predicts violent and conflictive state behavior. The objective of this study is to analyze existing and potential conflicts in the Arctic through the perspective of leading international relations theories in order to make projections of potential Arctic developments. As analytical tool the study applies a conflict analysis framework to structure and categorize both the findings and the analytical chapter. In this qualitative and abductive study the data has been collected through mainly official state and private documents and text analysis of these documents have been used as method. The study concludes that a combination of both cooperation and competition is likely to occur in the Arctic in future, but cooperation will be the first alternative of choice for states rather than conflict.

The article purports to express how, in the course of and subsequent to the proceedings in The Hague, the Peruvian Government has defined the legal nature of its 200 miles of maritime domain, by assuming its compatibility with the maritime zones established by United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UnClos). / El presente artículo pretende demostrar cómo, durante el proceso ante La Haya y con posterioridad a este, el Estado peruano ha definido la naturaleza jurídica de sus doscientas millas de dominio marítimo, al asumir su compatibilidad con las zonas marítimas establecidas en la Convención de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Derecho del Mar (Convemar).

This thesis deals with identification, analysis and critical assessment of challenges for international relations arising in the Arctic in connection with global climate change, which results mainly into decrease of the sea ice. Copenhagen School forms the primary theoretical bedrock of the thesis. The thesis maps the approach of different theoretical paradigms to the Arctic region throughout the history and on this basis it justifies the relevance of application of the concept of security sectors defined by Copenhagen School on the region. The thesis also maps the current governance mechanisms of the Arctic region as far as international law and institutional arrangements are concerned. The analysis of concrete challenges for international relations is structured according to the sectors of security defined by Copenhagen School. Thus, challenges in the environmental, societal, economic, political and military sectors are examined.

Bibliographic note STRAATSMA, Wietse. China's Maritime Lawfare in the South China Sea. Prague, 2018. 83 pages. Master's thesis (Mgr.) Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies. Department of Security Studies. Supervisor PhDr. Vít Střítecký, M.Phil., Ph.D. Abstract The primary aim of this thesis is to examine if and how the People's Republic of China uses legal warfare to strengthen its maritime power in the South China Sea. To examine this, Dunlap's interpretation of lawfare has been combined with a lawfare typology from Kittrie to create a framework from which China's behavior has been examined. The paper posits that China's behavior in and related to the South China Sea meets the criteria of lawfare. China utilizes both instrumental lawfare and compliance-leverage disparity lawfare to justify its legal claims on the South China Sea's maritime sphere and the landforms that lie within it. This lawfare combined with enforcement has led to China gaining substantial maritime power. The islands China occupies and their militarization have granted it marine resources, naval power, and bases to project power from. The thesis contributes to the literature on China's behavior in the South China Sea by providing a lens through which to view its actions. Moreover, it contributes...

Depuis la création de l'Union soviétique jusqu'à sa dissolution, la mer Caspienne appartenait à l'Iran et à l'URSS, qui constituaient ses deux seuls États riverains. Ces derniers avaient convenu de gérer la Caspienne «en commun », selon un régime de condominium, dans deux accords bilatéraux signés en 1921 et 1940. Cependant, après le démembrement de l'Union soviétique en 1991, trois nouveaux États indépendants et riverains de la Caspienne (1'Azerbaïdjan, le Kazakhstan et le Turkménistan) se sont ajoutés à l'équation, et ont exigé une révision du régime juridique conventionnel en vigueur. Ainsi, des négociations multilatérales ont été entamées, lesquelles ont mis en relief plusieurs questions juridiques faisant l'objet d'interprétation divergente: Le régime juridique conventionnel de 1921 et de 1940 (établissant une gestion en commun) est-il toujours valable dans la nouvelle conjoncture? Les nouveaux États riverains successeurs de l'Union soviétique sont-ils tenus de respecter les engagements de l'ex-URSS envers l'Iran quant à la Caspienne? Quel est l'ordre juridique applicable à la mer Caspienne? Serait-ce le droit de la mer (UNCLOS) ou le droit des traités? La notion de rebus sic stantibus - soit le « changement fondamental de circonstances» - aurait-elle pour effet l'annulation des traités de 1921 et de 1940? Les divisions administratives internes effectuées en 1970 par l'URSS pour délimiter la mer sont-elles valides aujourd'hui, en tant que frontières maritimes? Dans la présente recherche, nous prendrons position en faveur de la validité du régime juridique établi par les traités de 1921 et de 1940 et nous soutiendrons la position des États qui revendiquent la transmission des engagements de l'ex-URSS envers l'Iran aux nouveaux États riverains. Pour cela nous effectuerons une étude complète de la situation juridique de la mer Caspienne en droit international et traiterons chacune des questions mentionnées ci-dessus. Le droit des traités, le droit de la succession d'États, la Convention des Nations Unies du droit de la mer de 1982, la doctrine, la jurisprudence de la C.I.J et les positions des États riverains de la Caspienne à l'ONU constituent nos sources pour l'analyse détaillée de cette situation. / From the creation of the Soviet Union to its dissolution, the Caspian Sea belonged to Iran and the USSR, which were its only two littoral States. The Caspian was, during this period, governed by two bilateral agreements signed in 1921 and 1940, in which the two States had agreed to “jointly” manage the Sea. However, after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 gave birth to three newly independent States (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) with coast lines along the Caspian Sea, these three new actors demanded with insistence that the existing treaty-based regime be revised. During the course of the ensuing negotiations, several legal questions have been raised: Is the treaty-based legal regime established by the 1921 and 1940 treaties still valid in the new regional configuration? Are the newly independent States, successors to the USSR, obliged to respect the former Union's legal obligations towards Iran? If not, what is the appropriate legal regime applicable to the Caspian? Is it the law of the Sea (as defined mostly in the UNCLOS) or the law of treaties? Considering the new regional configuration, does the concept of rebus sic stantibus - or the fundamental change of circumstances - invalidate the 1921 and 1940 treaties? Will the internal administrative divisions established in 1970 by the former Soviet Union with regards to the Caspian become - de jure - the new international maritime frontiers? In this thesis, we argue in favour of the validity of the legal regime established by the 1921 and 1940 treaties and we support the position of those States which assert the transmissibility of the obligations of the former Union to the newly independent littoral States. In doing so, we will provide a complete analysis of the legal dilemma at hand and suggest appropriate analytical answers to the aforementioned questions. The law of treaties, the law of the succession of States, the 1982 United Nations' Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), doctrinal commentaries, case law of the I.C.J, and official U.N documents revealing the positions of each littoral States will be thoroughly conversed in this regard.