Revision of U.S. could rely on bilateral treaties as an alternative to UNCLOS regime from Sat, 11/11/2017 - 16:52
The United States can successfully pursue its national interests regarding its extended continental shelf by negotiating on a bilateral basis with nations with which it shares maritime borders to delimit and mutually recognize each other’s maritime and ECS boundaries.
Quicktabs: Arguments
The U.S. ECS Task Force is actively collecting data in other areas around the globe where the United States has presumptive areas of ECS. In addition to the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea, the task force has surveyed potential ECS areas off the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, in the Gulf of Alaska, around the Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll, at the Necker Ridge near Hawaii, in the Northern Mariana Islands, and near Guam.43
Once the mapping is complete, the United States will be in a position to negotiate ECS boundary treaties with nations that have maritime or continental shelf boundaries appur- tenant to U.S. territories, including Japan and Micronesia (in regard to potential ECS associated with the Northern Marianas); Kiribati (in regard to the Palmyra Atoll); and the Bahamas (in regard to the southern end of the U.S. Atlantic Coast). The United States and Canada will need to negotiate one or more treaties to delimit potential areas of ECS located in the Gulf of Alaska and areas associated with their Atlantic and Pacific maritime borders.
To summarize, despite dire warnings from the proponents of U.S. accession to UNCLOS, actual events demonstrate that the United States need not join the convention to delimit areas of its ECS, secure jurisdiction and control over those areas, and commence development of the hydrocarbon resources beneath the ECS. The United States is actively doing so in several crucial, resource-rich regions, including the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic Ocean, and the Bering Sea. Such delimitation has been and will continue to be conducted in cooperation with neighboring countries, including Mexico, Russia, and Canada, regard- less of whether the U.S. is a member of UNCLOS.
Despite the claims of UNCLOS proponents, the United States can successfully pursue its national interests regarding its ECS—particularly oil and gas exploitation—with- out first gaining universal interna- tional recognition of its outer limits. While such recognition may be a worthy achievement, it is of no consequence to U.S. national interests whether the 195 nations of the world affirmatively recognize America’s jurisdiction over its ECS in the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic Ocean, and elsewhere.
While achieving unanimous international recognition for the borders of the U.S. ECS is unnecessary, it is important for the U.S. to negotiate on a bilateral basis with nations with which it shares maritime borders to delimit and mutually recognize each other’s maritime and ECS boundaries. This process is already underway in regions where the United States has presumptive areas of ECS, including resource-rich areas in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean.