When running a country it is pretty easy to determine borders with fences or walls, but determining your coast and how far a countries claim goes is harder to determine, well if your landlocked I guess it doesn't matter as much. For example how far does your sovereignty go out from the coast or how much sovereignty? A total of 165 states have signed a United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which sets the standards for this type of stuff.
There are different types of waters and how much jurisdiction a state has them. The first are internal waters, these are water ways that are in the land part of the country the state has full jurisdiction in these waters and foreign ships are not at all to pass through these.
The next are territorial waters, this makes up the coast of a country and are based off the countries baseline on the sore. Territorial waters go out 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers; 14 miles) off the baseline. Governments can set up laws and regulations and foreign vessels can pass through here under "innocent passage". Innocent passage in a peaceful matter and no fishing, polluting, weapons practice or spying are not considered innocent, which should be obvious. And underwater vessels like submarines are required to on the surface and fly their nation's flag. And beyond the territorial waters there is the contiguous zone, which is another 12 nautical miles from the territorial waters and states are allowed to enforce laws on customs, taxation, immigration and pollution.
Next there are Exclusive economic zones. These go out 200 nautical miles out from the baseline. Here coastal nations have all rights to exploit the natural resources in this range, from fishing to mining operations and oil drilling.
The last one is the continental shelf. Nations are allowed exploit natural resources that are located within their coasts continental shelf. But if their countries continental shelf exceeds 350 nautical miles, they can only go up to 350 nautical miles.
These sea claims will be under constant dispute. Claims will overlap each other and as different nations claim to control islands that are near each other. For example the sea claims of he South China Sea, with the countries of China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia, with sea claims that overlap the other.
More on the Law of the Sea
No comments:
Post a Comment