A landmark opinion from the United Nations International Court of Justice has ruled that rising sea levels caused by climate change do not require countries to redraw their maritime borders. Small island nations, among the most vulnerable to sea level rise, are hailing the decision as a victory against a threat to their sovereignty.
In a July 23 advisory opinion, the U.N.’s highest court concluded that a nation’s existing maritime zones should remain unchanged even if coastlines shrink as sea levels rise. It also said that if the landmass of an established country were to be completely submerged by rising seas, “the disappearance of one of its constituent elements would not necessarily entail loss of statehood.”
In Mongabay’s Sept. 9 podcast, host Mike DiGirolamo spoke to Angelique Pouponneau, an environmental lawyer from Seychelles and lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States.
“What island nations were trying to guard against through state practice was essentially if there were ever to be loss of territory, it would not mean loss of exclusive economic zone,” Pouponneau said in the interview.
Countries can claim control over ocean waters up to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from their shores, an area known as the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), where they hold exclusive rights to fishing and natural resources.
Until relatively recently, shorelines were presumed to be stable. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that first established legal limits for claims on the ocean makes no mention of sea level rise. The concern among low-lying island nations is that as their coastlines recede, there would be a corresponding shrinkage in the outer limit of their EEZ.
“Inevitably, our economies are entirely dependent … on this ocean space,” Pouponneau said. “Can you imagine you once had exclusive rights, and then … everybody’s actually able to have access to all the resources that you had exclusive rights to?”
The nations most impacted by rising seas are in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean, as well as other island nations in Asia and Africa, such as Timor-Leste and Comoros. The Solomon Islands, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, has already lost five reef islands to sea level rise.
“One of the things that island nations tried to shift in terms of the narrative was: I may be limited in landmass, but I have this whole huge ocean space,” Pouponneau said.
Seychelles, a nation of around 100,000 people and just 459 square kilometers (177 square miles) of land, has 1.35 million km2 (521,000 mi2) of ocean, an area larger than Peru.
For Pouponneau, the decision is also important for marine conservation: “We see ourselves as responsible custodians of our ocean space, because we understand that it is foundational to everything.”
Listen to the full podcast episode here.
Banner image: An island in Fiji, in the South Pacific. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Credits
