Some implications in international law of the Soviet proposal to open the northern sea royte to transnational comercial traffic; transit passage in the Soviet Arctic straits ...

• Main Author: Dunlap, William Vern
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository 1991
• Subjects: Arctic; Bering Strait; Fridtjof; Pacific; Fridtjof Nansen; Law of the Sea; Northern Sea Route; Scott Polar Research Institute
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.23944; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/276646

The Soviet Union, with the cooperation of the Scott Polar Research Institute, the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has recently undertaken the Northern Sea Route Project, an effort to ascertain the feasibility of opening the shipping route along the Arctic coast of the Soviet Union, from the Norwegian frontier to the Bering Strait. The goal is to operate the route on a year-round basis, offering it to commercial shippers as a substantially shorter alternative route from northern Europe to the Pacific Ocean in the hope of raising hard currency in exchange for pilotage, icebreaking, refueling, and other services. Meanwhile, the international law of the sea has been developing at a rapid pace, creating, among other things, a right of transit passage that allows, subject to specified conditions, the relatively unrestricted passage of all foreign vessels -commercial and military -- through straits used for international navigation. In addition, transit passage permits ...