Canada and the Russian Federation: Maritime Boundaries and Jurisdiction in the Arctic Ocean

• Published in: Arctic Review on Law and Politics
• Main Authors: Viatcheslav Gavrilov, Ted L. McDorman, Clive Schofield
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Norwegian
• Published: Cappelen Damm Akademisk NOASP 2022
• Subjects: arctic ocean; law of the sea; ocean governance; maritime delimitation; continental shelf; overlapping claims; droit; scipo; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Canada; Arctic review on law and politics; Law of the Sea
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v13.3233; https://doaj.org/article/603d448269234f4d9f55ababfb25eadd

The Arctic region has been the focus of considerable attention in recent years, often concerned with maritime claims and an alleged race for the region’s resources. Against this narrative, the article focuses on the practices of Canada and the Russian Federation with respect to their maritime jurisdictional claims and the delimitation of maritime boundaries with their Arctic neighbours. The article provides an overview of the Arctic region and the international law of the sea with an emphasis on the baselines and maritime claims of the Arctic coastal states. Discussion then turns to the maritime boundary agreements that have been concluded in the Arctic region before overlapping claims to areas of continental shelf underlying the central part of the Arctic Ocean are appraised. The article concludes that Canada and the Russian Federation have enjoyed considerable success in resolving overlapping maritime claims and their pragmatic and innovative approaches coupled with existing regional cooperation bode well for finding peaceful solutions to Arctic Ocean governance challenges in the future.