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 sovereign states and the European Union are parties.
Victoria University of Wellington is a public research university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a constituent college of the University of New Zealand.
Sir Geoffrey Winston Russell Palmer is a New Zealand lawyer and former politician who was a member of Parliament from 1979 to 1990. He served as the 33rd prime minister of New Zealand for a little over a year, from August 1989 until September 1990, leading the Fourth Labour Government. As minister of justice from 1984 to 1989, Palmer was responsible for considerable reforms of the country's legal and constitutional framework, such as the creation of the Constitution Act 1986, New Zealand Bill of Rights, Imperial Laws Application Act, and the State Sector Act. He served as president of the New Zealand Law Commission, from 2005 to 2010.
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.
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.
Ocean governance is the conduct of the policy, actions and affairs regarding the world's oceans. Within governance, it incorporates the influence of non-state actors, i.e. stakeholders, NGOs and so forth, therefore the state is not the only acting power in policy making. However, ocean governance is complex because much of the ocean is a commons that is not ‘owned’ by any single person or nation/state. There is a belief more strongly in the US than other countries that the “invisible hand” is the best method to determine ocean governance factors. These include factors such as what resources we consume, what price we should pay for them, and how we should use them. The underlying reasoning behind this is the market has to have the desire in order to promote environmental protection, however this is rarely the case. This term is referred to as a market failure. Market failures and government failures are the leading causes of ocean governance complications. As a result, humankind has tended to overexploit marine resources, by treating them as shared resources while not taking equal and collective responsibilities in caring for them.
High seas fisheries management refers to the governance and regulation of fishing activities in areas beyond national jurisdiction, often referred to as the 'high seas'.1 The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 1995 United Nations Fish Stock Agreement (UNFSA) provide the international legal framework for the regulation of fishing activities in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The United Nations Fish Stock Agreement delegates responsibility for conservation and management of fish stocks to regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) each governing a geographical area of the high seas.
Diane Seward is a low temperature thermochronologist. She is currently a Teaching Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington and affiliated with GNS Science. Seward's work has predominantly focused on thermochronology applied to basin analysis and tectonic evolution. Her research has also been instrumental in developing dating of volcanic deposit through fission track analysis.
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.
The United Nations agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction or BBNJ Agreement, also referred to by some stakeholders as the High Seas Treaty or Global Ocean Treaty, is a legally binding instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction. There is some controversy over the popularized name of the agreement. It is an agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The text was finalised during an intergovernmental conference at the UN on 4 March 2023 and adopted on 19 June 2023. Both states and regional economic integration organizations can become parties to the treaty.
Elizabeth Jane Macpherson is a New Zealand academic, of Pākehā descent and is a full professor at the University of Canterbury, specialising in indigenous water rights in Australasia and Latin America. She was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship in 2023 to work on the legal frameworks around blue carbon.
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in urban American architectural history and the history of interior design.
Barbara Anne Bollard also known as Barbara Breen and Bollard-Breen, is a New Zealand academic, and is a professor at University of Wollongong. She was previously a full professor at Auckland University of Technology, specialising in using remote sensing and drones to map and manage conservation areas.
Nicola Anne Hessell is a pakēhā New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in British Romantic literature, and the intersection between Romantic literature and indigeneity.
Sarah Patricia Hill is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in Italian cultural studies. Hill researches Italian culture, especially the role of photography in culture, and violence and disability in Italian cinema.
Jessica Christine Lai is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in the interaction of intellectual property rights and indigenous knowledge.
Alison Kay Morris Matthews is a New Zealand academic education researcher, and is emeritus professor at the Eastern Institute of Technology, specialising in community history, education, and women and children's issues.
Victoria Jane Mabin, also van den Broek-Mabin, is a New Zealand management academic, and is a professor emeritus at Victoria University of Wellington. Mabin is a Fellow of the UK Operational Research Society and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization.
The Offshore Constitutional Settlement (OCS) is an agreement between the Commonwealth of Australia and the States which provides the basis for an agreed division of powers between the Commonwealth and the States in relation to coastal waters and in relation to certain other matters including the regulation of shipping and navigation, offshore petroleum exploration, crimes at sea, and fisheries.
