Introduction
1. The global acceptance in the mid-1970s of the 200 nautical mile
Exclusive Economic Zone, the "EEZ", must be considered one of the most
significant events in the history of international maritime law. As
civilization had developed States had effectively controlled, off their
maritime coasts, only a very narrow belt of waters, restricted over
recent centuries to a territorial sea limited to 3 or 4 nautical miles
(12 in more recent years, for some countries). The legal regime of
"high seas" and "freedom of the seas" had applied to all waters outside
the territorial sea. Virtually overnight, in historical terms, the
transition was made to a new legal regime under which every coastal
State has control, for economic purposes and for its own benefit, over
a broad swath of waters beyond its territorial sea to a distance of
200 nautical miles.
2. The waters within 200 nautical miles, embracing some 30% of the world's
oceans and seas[1] produced
more than 90% of the world's marine fish catches, which totalled
approximately 66 million metric tons in
1973.[2] These waters were
also superjacent to almost all contemporarily exploitable undersea oil
and gas deposits. By the 1970s the undersea area containing these
deposits already belonged to the adjacent coastal States through general
acceptance in the period after World War II of the international legal
concept of the continental shelf (with undetermined outer limits) as the
territory of the coastal State. For the future the waters within 200
nautical miles, because of their coastal proximity, were the most likely
source of economic benefits to become available through new ocean uses,
such as energy production.
3. These waters had been part of the high seas, open to the vessels of
any State to use and exploit largely as they chose, subject, with minor
exceptions, only to the power of their "flag State" to make and enforce
laws to control their activities. That this would remain so for the
indefinite future must have seemed likely to many people in mid-century,
bearing in mind that at two United Nations conferences on the law of sea,
UNCLOS I in 1958 and UNCLOS II in 1960, the world community could not
agree to allow extension of jurisdiction even to a 12 nautical mile limit
worldwide for coastal State
control.[3] Suddenly this
was all changed.
4. The purpose of this paper is to provide a very general overview
of the context for this change, the events and causes that led to it,
the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea that began
in 1973 and precipitated it, the Canadian perspective, the contents of
the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,
"UNCLOS"[4] that
emerged from this conference and codified the EEZ together with other
elements of and changes in the law of the sea, and major problems that
remained or developed after the EEZ came into effect and UNCLOS was
finalized.
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