Maritime Disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean. Roudi Baroudi
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continuous and expeditious manner.
9. Nautical Charts
Nautical charts are the primary recommended source of coastline information (especially when considering analysis of existing published straight baselines, as suggested by the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS). They produce recommended guidelines to follow their “Rules of Procedure” (for all Law of the Sea applications to be followed by all coastal states). For some Law of the Sea applications, these LOS results are then deposited with the CLCS and with the Secretary General of the United Nations to facilitate the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. These CLCS Technical Guidelines (from the United Nations) define the proper steps to implement all data types and procedures used for LOS applications.
Common Abbreviations
4DSSM: Four-Dimensional Satellite Seafloor Morphology (Fugro customized mapping application)
CARIS LOTS: A Canadian marine-based commercial software product, developed as a customized Law of the Sea-specific geographic information system (GIS) with thousands of customized LOS applications for precision mapping, written explicitly for global use. This product is used around the world for all Law of the Sea projects managed, maintained, and mapped by Fugro
CLCS: Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf
DII: Drilling Info’s Global Oil and Gas Concession Blocks Database
DLM: Delimitation (as applied to maritime boundaries)
ECS: Extended Continental Shelf
JDZ: Joint Development Zone
LTP: Land Terminus Point
nm: Nautical Miles
OCA: Overlapping Claims Area
PSC: Production Sharing Contract
TRIJUNCTION: Also called the trijunction point, tripoint, triple point, or tri-border area, this is a geographic point at which the boundaries of three countries or subnational entities meet
TSBM: Territorial Sea Baseline Model
UKHO ADMIRALTY: United Kingdom Hydrographic Office Admiralty
UfM: Union for the Mediterranean
UNCLOS: United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
WGS84: World Geodetic System 1984, a comprehensive dataset of global coordinates employed as a universal standard for cartography, geodesy, and satellite navigation (including GPS) that is defined, updated, and maintained by the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Disclaimer
Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the maps and other graphics and figures contained in this book. Nevertheless, all of these are necessarily independent and preliminary, as well as illustrative and/or indicative.
1. As per the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office of General Counsel.
Introduction
No More Zero-Sum Games: Why Cooperation is Synonymous with Civilization
This book is explicitly about the need to define international maritime boundaries so that coastal states, principally those of the Mediterranean Sea and in particular those of its easternmost waters, are freer to safely and effectively exploit the resources off their respective coasts. Implicit, however, is an underlying belief in the rule of law, the immutability of science, and the duty of all responsible governments to seek the peaceful resolution of disputes. In short, we as a species have got to the point where we now have the laws, precedents, and procedures in place to fairly and reliably resolve virtually all of the world’s maritime boundary disputes. This degree of certainty is made possible by technological advances that have revolutionized the fields of precision mapping and data-processing software. The solutions are available to resolve disputes that are decades or even centuries old. But this can happen only when relevant states live up to their obligations by keeping the gunboats at home and take up the legal and diplomatic tools at their disposal.
By no measure are these disputes inconsequential. For one thing, the 21 states that ring the Mediterranean have a total population of some 516 million people, a substantial figure when one considers the corresponding numbers in, for example, Russia (146 million), the United States (329 million), or even all of the European Union (513 million). Most Mediterranean countries are rife with poverty and inequality, and the emergence of a thriving energy sector would make it possible to improve hundreds of millions of lives fundamentally. For another, the settling of maritime boundaries would not only open up vast tracts of seabed for oil and gas companies to explore and exploit but also do the same for other sectors, including mining. Given that the 21 coastal states contain a total of 67 volcanoes, whose presence often indicates nearby deposits of everything from nickel to diamonds and gold, the mineral payoff could be an unprecedented bonanza for the region.
The states in this region are bound by shared geography, geology, and membership in the United Nations and by the spirit of cooperation embodied by the Barcelona Process– including the 1995 launch of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the 1996 conference of energy ministers in Trieste, and the establishment in 2008 of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM). This common history gives all 21 coastal states, and by extension the entire European Union, a shared interest in promoting conditions that further cross-border trade, investment, and economic integration. From yet another perspective, the seven coastal states of the Eastern Mediterranean are home to more than two dozen power plants that run on coal,1 the dirtiest of all hydrocarbons, and a notorious contributor to global climate change. If and when these countries sort out their maritime boundaries and start producing natural gas, which is the cleanest of hydrocarbon fuels, all or most of these plants could be replaced by (or converted to) gas-fired facilities, with significant short- and long-term benefits to the environment.
The question is whether sufficient numbers of governments can summon the requisite political will to submit their respective claims to the scrutiny of law and science. In much of the world, daily news reports hardly paint an encouraging picture, with many national leaders and other high-profile figures routinely making bombastic pronouncements that serve only to obfuscate facts and increase tensions. There also are compelling reasons of self-interest for many states to settle their differences quickly and amicably, especially when there are significant resources at stake. Looking at history in longer arcs, it may be just a matter of time before leadership arrives at the appropriate conclusions and gets down to the business of responsibly exploiting the resources involved.
The UN’s purpose is to mediate among national governments with the goal of an international system governed by the rule of law, not the use or threat of military force. This role starts with the UN Charter itself, which explicitly obliges all member states to settle their differences peaceably. And each time a government opts for talks rather than tanks, human civilization becomes a little more civilized. For our discussion, the most relevant item in the UN toolbox is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS has a comprehensive set of rules applicable to all states that have signed and ratified it, currently numbering almost 170 countries, plus the European Union.
UNCLOS arguably can be traced back to the actions of then-U.S. President Harry Truman. In 1945 Truman extended the U.S. claim to offshore natural resources from just a few nautical miles off the coast to its entire continental shelf, which could extend dozens or even hundreds of miles out to sea. Truman’s decision was driven by the realization that vast amounts of hydrocarbons and other resources were likely locked away deep beneath the seabed, and technological advances would soon make it commonplace to locate and extract them. Other countries soon followed suit, which led to the proliferation of overlapping maritime claims around the globe and to calls for the establishment of an orderly system that would regularize the delineation of maritime boundaries to resolve disputes and prevent conflicts.
Those calls led eventually to the creation of UNCLOS, which was concluded in 1982 and came into force in 1994. Washington itself has never ratified the agreement due to concerns