Nereus Fellow Richard Caddell (UBC) will be attending the workshop “Natural Marine Resource Management in a Changing Climate”, jointly hosted by the K.G. Jebsen Centre for the Law of the…
Caddell delivered his presentation — “After the Thaw: Ice Retreat and the Emerging Regulation of Newly Exposed Marine Areas” — during the first session of the conference. He discussed Antarctic ice shelves, anthropogenic activities and management, as well as future issues with thawing land areas and collaboration on these issues between the Antarctic and Arctic.
The Nereus Program hosted a side event at the 3rd Preparatory Committee Meeting on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), March 27 to April 7 at the UN Headquarters, in New York. The side event entitled “Adjacency: How legal precedent, ecological connectivity, and traditional knowledge inform our understanding of proximity” was held on April 4.
Law of the Sea is an important aspect of international law that has implications on state sovereignty, resource distribution, and global fisheries management. Recently, the Philippines utilized the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to assert its marine territorial claims in the Philippines v. China on the South China Sea.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Part XIV provides for State cooperation with the view to promoting the development and transfer of marine science and technology. In addition, Article 202 refers to the provision of scientific and technical assistance to developing States for the protection and preservation of the marine environment. UNCLOS Part XIV and XIII refer to various forms of technology transfer including training, access to information, international scientific research cooperation and establishing national and regional marine science and technology centres.
Newly published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy is the paper “Dispute Resolution and Scientific Whaling in the Antarctic: The Story Continues” by Nereus Fellow Richard Caddell, Utrecht University. The paper looks at the implications of judgements by the International Court of Justice against Japanese scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean.
One of the most significant – and increasingly bitter – international disputes of recent years has engaged legal claims over maritime territory in the South China Sea. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 (UNCLOS), to which the main protagonists are parties, states are entitled to claim an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) conferring sovereign rights and jurisdiction up to 200 nautical miles of maritime space from their coasts. In the South China Sea, however, this position has been complicated by historical claims over a series of small islands and reefs within the southern section of this area.
Fish don’t respect borders. With 1982’s United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, coastal nations were given the right to manage fisheries within their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) – the area that extends, generally, up to 200 nautical miles. But of course, fish don’t adhere to imaginary lines in the ocean.
Richard Caddell, Senior Nereus Fellow at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, has published a paper entitled “Platforms, Protestors and Provisional Measures: The Arctic Sunrise Dispute and Environmental Activism at Sea” (PDF) in the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2014.
