The North Pole Seabed Nature Reserve as a Provisional Arrangement

• Published in: The International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law
• Main Author: Gayazova, Olya
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Brill 2012
• Subjects: Law; Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law; General Environmental Science; Geography, Planning and Development; Oceanography; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; North Pole
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157180812x606960; https://brill.com/view/journals/estu/27/1/article-p97_4.xml; https://brill.com/downloadpdf/journals/estu/27/1/article-p97_4.xml

Abstract That the geographic North Pole is the Arctic Schelling point, is implicit in the Russian submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. I assess this premise vis-à-vis three other approaches to the outer continental shelf delimitation in the Arctic Ocean—the median-line method; a joint submission; and an international zone around the North Pole—and show that both the premise and the alternatives have limitations. Then I explain how an agreement between the Arctic Ocean states (the A5) to establish a seabed nature reserve north of 88°20´N and within 100 nm from the 2,500-meter isobath overcomes those limitations and what positive direct and indirect effects may come from it.