As we have noted before there is a scramble for resources going on which is leading to growing tensions:
The United Kingdom is planning to claim sovereign rights over a vast area of the remote seabed off Antarctica, the Guardian has learned. The submission to the United Nations covers more than 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) of seabed, and is likely to signal a quickening of the race for territory around the south pole in the world's least explored continent.
The claim would be in defiance of the spirit of the 1959 Antarctic treaty, to which the UK is a signatory. It specifically states that no new claims shall be asserted on the continent. The treaty was drawn up to prevent territorial disputes.
(Here)
In related news, Canada is stepping up patrols of the Northwest Passage:
In an interview with BBC News, the head of the Canadian Coast Guard, George Da Pont, said: "Our view is that it's our territorial waters and that we govern it accordingly. Obviously the Americans and some European countries have different views.
"I assume at some point in time they'll get settled but we're pretty confident that they're Canadian territorial waters and that we should be regulating and asserting our control over them as we would over any other part of our territorial water.
"It's critical, it's part of our history; like any country it's important to assert your control over your country and your territorial waters."
(Here)
Article on New Zealands and Australia's land claims can be found here
ReplyDeletehttp://www.stuff.co.nz/4241505a6160.html
In April last year, New Zealand applied to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to take over control of 1.7 million sqkm of seabed – outside the existing 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone – on the continental shelf around the mainland and its main islands.
Control of the additional area – more than six times the size of New Zealand and stretching in some places 563km from shore – will give NZ rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to billions of dollars worth of minerals and biological resources on the seabed.
"New Zealand did not claim a NZ portion of Antarctica's seabed, but reserved a right to do so at a later stage" says Karen Scott, a senior lecturer in law at Canterbury University
Australia – which claims 42 per cent of the Antarctic – included data on the seabed off its Antarctic territory in its own UNCLOS claim."But Australia asked the commission expressly not to consider the Antarctic portion of its UNCLOS claim," said Ms Scott.
Antarctica has large known reserves of many minerals, including copper, gold and silver, as well as oil and gas, and in May 2006, Australian senator Barnaby Joyce urged his country to begin preparations for mining their territory.
An Australian study in a policy paper released earlier this year has said that drilling for oil in Antarctica will be economic when the international price reaches $US200/barrel.