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, but ignored China’s warning to stay away. After asking countries “outside the region” to stay away from the South China Sea, China issued a démarche to India in November 2011, underlining that Beijing’s permission should be sought for exploration in Blocks 127 and 128 and, without it, OVL’s activities would be considered illegal. Vietnam, meanwhile, had underlined the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to claim its sovereign rights over the two blocks being explored. India decided to go by Vietnam’s claims and ignore China’s objections.3 China has been
Council observers. The amendment (the ‘Nuuk criteria’) required aspiring observers to submit comprehensive applications detailing how they fulfilled the seven observer criteria, including demonstration of Arctic interests; financial and material contributions to the work of the Council; recognition of the Arctic states’ sovereignty and jurisdiction over the region; and support for the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the prevailing legal framework for the Arctic. Furthermore, the Task Force on Institutional Cooperation had produced, during the Swedish chairmanship
, speaking and acting The architecture of acceptable and unacceptable State action in the Arctic is secured in hard and soft laws, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and also global conventions on other issues relating to biodiversity, trade, the Polar Code of the International Maritime Organization and so on. Compliance with these rules is often optional and sometimes binding, but, in any case, the content of the rules tends to be developed through formal political processes of negotiation (at the international level). These rules also tend to be anchored to
Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies 1967. 44 Article 1 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation 1944. 45 J. Crawford, Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law (Oxford University Press 8th edn 2012) 221–6. 46 Article 87 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982. 47 UN Doc A/RES/1721 (1961). See also UN Doc A/RES/1884 (1963). 48 UN Doc A/RES/1962 (1963). 49 UN Doc E/CN.4/L610 (1962). 50 J.E.S. Fawcett, International Law and the Uses of Outer Space
Sea under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This dispute has become more important since the early 2000s because of gas and oil deposits, with both countries establishing drilling platforms. The issue has become militarised, with China’s growing military power allowing it to extend patrols into new areas and bringing the two countries’ forces into regular proximity in disputed territories. Observers fear that the situation could trigger armed conflict between them. In 2008 China and Japan reached a ‘political agreement’ on exploitation of the East
from the two outmost points of each state’s coastline. These lines would continue out into the sea until they eventually diverge, dividing the Caspian Sea into various sized segments. Each country would have the rights to the oil within its portion of the sea. Iran and Russia insist that the Caspian is a sea and that under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, each littoral state owns the sea’s resources within a 12-mile limit. It also possessed an exclusive economic zone for a further 200 miles. Moscow and Tehran claim ownership over the sea resources in a 4