On International Law Governance In The Arctic Region

This paper seeks to point out that the effects of climate change and increasing human activity in the Arctic region has posed challenges to the existing international legal system, and discusses how international law can be applied in this region. Historically, the Arctic Ocean was frozen solid with sea ice for most of the year. This situation kept the region cool, and inaccessible. Over the past thirty years, however, both the thickness and extent of sea ice in the Arctic have declined markedly. The Arctic is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. And, because of the key role the Arctic plays in global climate, changes in the Arctic will reverberate around the globe. In particular, the Arctic Ocean plays an important role in moderating the global climate. The consequences of climate change for the Arctic are many and inter-connected. They are legal, political, social, economic and environmental. Today, The Arctic Ocean stands at the threshold of significant changes. Climate change and the melting of ice have a potential impact on vulnerable ecosystems, the livelihoods of local inhabitants and indigenous communities, and the potential exploitation of natural resources. Global warming is melting Arctic ice, making development of the region's substantial oil and gas reserves feasible. Therefore, the coastal States are scrambling to grab as much Arctic territory as they can. Disputes are already erupting over largely undefined boundaries and unexploited resources, states are looking to extend their existing claims or to assert entirely new claims to the continental shelf and its resources. On 2 August 2007, a Russian submarine planted a flag on the Arctic seabed; the dive was a symbolic move to enhance the government's claim to the Arctic Ocean and potential oil or other resources there. Other nations soon followed suit, and conflicting claims proliferated. Despite the region's fragility, the only protections afforded the Arctic are a collection of unrelated, nonbinding national and international agreements, and the Arctic Council, a voluntary organization of countries that border the Arctic Ocean. International law is the only real means to solve these problems. This paper tries to analyze how governments and international agencies can confront the massive challenges posed by global warming in the Arctic according to international law.The paper consists of three Sections.Section I outlines background information on the Arctic. Global warming is bringing rapid change to the Arctic, melting of sea ice and glaciers are increasing faster than scientists predicted. Environmental change is forcing legal and economic developments, which in turn will have serious environmental and social consequences. Competition for Arctic resources is heating up as climate change and new technologies make previously unfathomable exploration now possible. The paper also traces the development of early international legal regime in this region, and recalls an extensive international legal framework that applies to the Arctic region. The paper places an emphasis that there is no over-arching international legal regime and no multilateral political organization with the power to regulate activities or to take legally binding decisions in the Arctic. Arctic Council and other institutional arrangements are"soft law", that is, they are not legally binding. After describing briefly the legal and institutional regime, this paper takes the position that the existing legal regime and soft law agreements are insufficient to protect the Arctic.Section II discusses mainly on sovereignty disputes in the Arctic. The paper examines the perspectives of each State involved in the dispute, their factual and legal claims, and the policies underlying those claims. The focus of the disputes is the overlapping sovereignty right scope on the outer continental shelf. There were valuable resources on the continental shelf, and states were eager to assert the sovereign right to exploit them. The law of the sea provides for important rights and obligations concerning the delineation of the outer limits of the continental shelf, but it does not provide a binding method of resolution for overlapping continental shelf disputes in the Arctic. This paper holds that interested countries can make provisional arrangements based on Equitable Principle. The paper points out that Arctic Sea Route will become swiftly navigable and lead to the emergence of the dispute between countries; especially the Northeast Passage may become a potential source of international conflict. For example, the United States and Canada disagree about its legal status. This paper holds that the preferable solution to legal issues in the Arctic is a bilateral treaty between countries in the short term. To some extent, interested countries can consider the Malacca Straits model in solving Arctic Sea Route issues.Section III discusses possible solutions to the Arctic governance from the perspective of international law. This paper gives reasons why the actual challenge related to the legal regime in the Arctic may have more to do with a lack of implementation of existing rules than a lack of rules, such as the shortcomings of the international legal system, and the unique characteristics of the Arctic also exacerbate new problems. By comparative analysis, this paper emphasizes that models of maintain the status quo or Antarctica Treaty System are probably unsuitable for the Arctic, and we cannot rely too heavily on United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or the Svalbard Treaty. The paper holds that perhaps the most that can reasonably be expected way is under the auspices of the United Nation to work on a regional agreement about the status of the Arctic that would allow effective law to develop, in order to make all countries'actions are in strict compliance with international law, thus most emerging legal issues in the Arctic region thus can be nicely addressed.The innovation exists in many aspects in the paper, for instance, the paper holds that it is difficult to enact an"Arctic treaty". Obstacles to such a treaty include difficulties with trying to get Arctic states to cede their claims over the Arctic - something that seems impossible given the amount of wealth that stands to be gained from the region's opening. The paper points out that the ocean is one unity in a physical sense. From a legal viewpoint, however, the ocean has been divided by States. It may be said that the history of international law of the sea is that of the division of the ocean. In principle, the law of the sea regulates human activities by the sector or zonal management approach, the Arctic Ocean has no exception. But this traditional way is insufficient to resolve the problems in the Arctic, especially encounters an inherent difficulty in the conservation of marine living resources and marine biological diversity. Therefore, the paper highlights the need for an integrated management approach for the Arctic Ocean governance. The paper focus on the problem of the delineation of the outer limits of the continental shelf and debates over the legal status of the Arctic waters, and points out that the consequences of climate change in the Arctic clearly require serious attention, increased cooperation, and, ultimately legal reconciliation of international communities. This paper finishes by stating that whichever States gain sovereignty rights will be free to fully exploit the region with the rest of the world helpless to stop them. United Nation's regime, however, can strike a balance between preserving the Arctic of yesterday and developing the Arctic of tomorrow. And it is the best way to address state sovereignty claims and protect the Arctic's fragile ecosystem in the long run, etc.