The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and
the Development of UNCLOS
10. The pressures for extended coastal State jurisdiction for resource
exploitation for both water column and undersea resources did not develop
unopposed, or isolated from other ocean-related issues and concerns. The
steady process of enclosure that followed the Truman Proclamations produced
concerns among a variety of countries, not least the U.S. which had started
this process going. A great many States had interests that conflicted with
this development. States with fleets that were fishing off the coasts of
other countries, some that had fished in these areas for centuries, some
that were new participants, faced the prospect of losing access to the
resources that sustained these fleets and the home economies that they
served. There was internal confusion for some of these States. The U.S.
and Russia were examples of States that wanted to keep their traditional
access to distant fish stocks, but stood to benefit from extensions off
their own coasts over very large fish stocks. The situation was simpler
for other States, like Portugal and Spain, whose coastal resources were
negligible compared with their catches in other areas, primarily in the
North Atlantic and off West Africa. Apart from the fisheries issues,
developing States became increasingly aware that developed States were
creating the technology that would allow them to expand their undersea
hydrocarbon and mineral exploitation increasingly further from their
shores into areas, arguably not part of their continental shelves and,
at some point, certainly deep seabed that, if left unappropriated by
coastal States and by the wealthy corporations of developed States, would
remain open to all States as "the common heritage of
mankind".[8] It was
clear that the longer the various undersea exploitation issues remained
unresolved the more encroachments there would be by developed States
establishing claims that would, in some sense, rob the developing States
of potential wealth they believed should be shared with them.
11. The developed States had their own particular concerns. Even those
that wanted to extend their own jurisdiction over the water column off
their coasts, and exploit the subsea area to the farthest possible reaches
they could claim on their continental shelves, and beyond, worried that
in the absence of an internationally agreed regime of comprehensive rules
a hodge-podge of extensions following no agreed pattern would destabilize
what had been a very stable system for international use of the seas.
They worried, in particular, that this destabilization would lead to
erosions of the fundamentally important high seas rule of freedom of
navigation, particularly through a number of international straits
crucially important for commerce and the movement of naval vessels.
Finally there was the increasing problem of oceanic pollution from
giant oil tanker vessels, expelling oily water ballast at sea, or leaking,
or foundering. Coastal interests wanted coastal States to have the right
to protect the waters and living resources off their coasts from the
dangers created by these vessels; economic and commercial interests were
concerned to ensure unimpeded delivery of the fuel necessary for their
economies.
12. By the 1960s there was a general comprehension that the
interrelationship of the various issues was such that they could not
be dealt with piecemeal, or in isolation from each other. They had to
be dealt with all together in a comprehensive new constitution for the
oceans. It was to develop this constitution that the United Nations
convened the 3rd United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which
commenced in 1973.
13. The Conference took 10 years to produce the 1982 United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea, commonly referred to as UNCLOS. However
its effect regarding the EEZ was much more rapid. By the end of the
Conference's first substantive session in 1974 a draft set of rules for
the EEZ had been developed, for future incorporation into the overall
Convention. International acceptance of this draft set of rules for the
EEZ, and for the EEZ itself, was assumed to have taken place. This proved
to be the catalyst for unilateral action by coastal States worldwide,
extending their jurisdictions to 200 nautical miles and announcing that
the waters encompassed would be governed by the draft rules which had
emerged from the Conference. State practice, one of the normal sources
of customary international law, had never before developed so quickly, and
in that particular way. Legal experts referred to the phenomenon as
something quite new, called "instant international law".
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