The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is a Kingston, Jamaica-based intergovernmental body of 167 member states and the European Union. It was established under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and its 1994 Agreement on Implementation. The ISA's dual mission is to authorize and control the development of mineral related operations in the international seabed, which is considered the "common heritage of all mankind", and to protect the ecosystem of the seabed, ocean floor and subsoil in "The Area" beyond national jurisdiction. The ISA is responsible for safeguarding the international deep sea, defined as waters below 200 meters, where photosynthesis is hampered by inadequate light. Governing approximately half of the total area of the world's oceans, the ISA oversees activities that might threaten biological diversity and harm the marine environment.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea Treaty, is an international treaty that establishes a legal framework for all marine and maritime activities. As of October 2024, 169 States and the European Union are parties.
The terms international waters or transboundary waters apply where any of the following types of bodies of water transcend international boundaries: oceans, large marine ecosystems, enclosed or semi-enclosed regional seas and estuaries, rivers, lakes, groundwater systems (aquifers), and wetlands.
Territorial waters are informally an area of water where a sovereign state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone, and potentially the extended continental shelf. In a narrower sense, the term is often used as a synonym for the territorial sea.
Law of the sea is a body of international law governing the rights and duties of states in maritime environments. It concerns matters such as navigational rights, sea mineral claims, and coastal waters jurisdiction. The connotation of ocean law is somewhat broader, but the law of the sea is so comprehensive that it covers all areas of ocean law as well.
An exclusive economic zone (EEZ), as prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is an area of the sea in which a sovereign state has exclusive rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind.
The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) is an intergovernmental organization created by the mandate of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. It was established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, signed at Montego Bay, Jamaica, on December 10, 1982. The Convention entered into force on November 16, 1994, and established an international framework for law over all ocean space, its uses and resources. The ITLOS is one of four dispute resolution mechanisms listed in Article 287 of the UNCLOS. Although the Tribunal was established by a United Nations convention, it is not an "organ" of the United Nations. Even so, it maintains close links with the United Nations and in 1997 the Tribunal concluded an Agreement on Cooperation and Relationship between the United Nations and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which establishes a mechanism for cooperation between the two institutions.
The Timor Gap Treaty was formally known as the Treaty between Australia and the Republic of Indonesia on the zone of cooperation in an area between the Indonesian province of East Timor and Northern Australia. It was a bilateral treaty between the governments of Australia and Indonesia, which provided for the joint exploitation of petroleum and hydrocarbon resources in a part of the Timor Sea Seabed. The treaty was signed on 11 December 1989 and came into force on 9 February 1991. The signatories to the treaty were then Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans and then Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas.
A continental margin is the outer edge of continental crust abutting oceanic crust under coastal waters. It is one of the three major zones of the ocean floor, the other two being deep-ocean basins and mid-ocean ridges. The continental margin consists of three different features: the continental rise, the continental slope, and the continental shelf. Continental margins constitute about 28% of the oceanic area.
The Arctic consists of land, internal waters, territorial seas, exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and international waters above the Arctic Circle. All land, internal waters, territorial seas and EEZs in the Arctic are under the jurisdiction of one of the eight Arctic coastal states: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. International law regulates this area as with other portions of Earth.
The continental shelf of Russia or the Russian continental shelf is the continental shelf adjacent to the Russian Federation. Geologically, the extent of the shelf is defined as the entirety of the continental shelves adjacent to Russia's coasts. In international law, however, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea more narrowly defines the extent of the shelf as the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas over which a state exercises sovereign rights.
The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is a legally defined geographic feature of the United States. The OCS is the part of the internationally recognized continental shelf of the United States which does not fall under the jurisdictions of the individual U.S. states.
The United States was among the nations that participated in the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which took place from 1974 through 1982 and resulted in the international treaty known as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The United States also participated in the subsequent negotiations of modifications to the treaty from 1990 to 1994. The UNCLOS came into force in 1994. Although the United States now recognizes the UNCLOS as a codification of customary international law, it has not ratified it.
Arctic cooperation and politics are partially coordinated via the Arctic Council, composed of the eight Arctic states: the United States, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Denmark with Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The dominant governmental power in Arctic policy resides within the executive offices, legislative bodies, and implementing agencies of the eight Arctic countries, and to a lesser extent other countries, such as United Kingdom, Germany, European Union and China. NGOs and academia play a large part in Arctic policy. Also important are intergovernmental bodies such as the United Nations and NATO.
An archipelagic state is an island country that consists of one or more archipelago. The designation is legally defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982. The Bahamas, Fiji, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines are the five original sovereign states that obtained approval in the UNCLOS signed in Montego Bay, Jamaica on 10 December 1982 and qualified as the archipelagic states.
The exclusive economic zone of Somalia covers 830,389 km2 in the Indian Ocean. It extends to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines, from which the breadth of the nation's territorial waters is measured. In accordance with Law No. 37 passed in 1972, Somalia's EEZ falls under its territorial sovereignty.
The Blue Amazon or Brazilian maritime territory is the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of Brazil. It is an offshore area of 3.6 million square km on the Brazilian coast, rich in marine biodiversity and energy resources. The size is equivalent to the surface of the Amazon rainforest. The name is a reference to the biologically rich region of the Brazilian Amazon, with the addition of the adjective blue denoting the ocean.
Japan has the eighth-largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world. The total area of Japan is about 380 thousand km2. Japan's EEZ area is vast and the territorial waters and EEZ together is about 4.47 million km2.
The exclusive economic zone of Canada is the area of the sea in which Canada has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, as prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Seabed mining, also known as Seafloor mining is the recovery of minerals from the seabed by techniques of underwater mining. The concept includes mining at shallow depths on the continental shelf and deep-sea mining at greater depths associated with tectonic activity, hydrothermal vents and the abyssal plains. The increased requirement for minerals and metals used in the technology sector has led to a renewed interest in the mining of seabed mineral resources, including massive polymetallic sulfide deposits around hydrothermal vents, cobalt-rich crusts on the sides of seamounts and fields of manganese nodules on the abyssal plains. While the seabed provides a high concentration of valuable minerals, there is an unknown risk of ecological damage on marine species because of a lack of data.
Convention on the Continental Shelf at Wikisource 