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The law of the seabed 40 years after UNCLOS
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The present ocean regime, based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, encompasses a multitude of maritime spaces. From this Convention, two new concepts of maritime spaces emerged: the Exclusive Economic Zone and the Area, with the latter being regarded as the common heritage of Humankind. This Convention also introduced a new approach to the Continental Shelf, requiring coastal states to undergo a different process from the one stipulated in the 1958 Convention on the Continental Shelf to have their limits internationally recognised. As an exercise of sovereignty, these new outer limits are defined by coastal states and must be submitted to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which issues recommendations regarding those limits for acceptance by the international community. This paper describes the evolution of the concept of the Continental Shelf in International Law and examines the role and challenges of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf when considering coastal states’ submissions to establish the outer limits in accordance with Article 76 of the Convention. Additionally, it discusses emerging issues related to the performance of the Commission, due to the misperception of the endurance of this process during the draft of the Convention. The inability to define an international maritime boundary that clearly delineates the transition from national to international sovereignty within a reasonable timeframe can potentially strain the current status of the international relations.
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Citation
Campos, A. S. D. (2025). The law of the seabed 40 years after UNCLOS. In T. Kami?ski, & K. Karski (Eds.), 40 years of the United Nations convention on the law of the sea (1 ed., pp. 89-101). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003492566-10
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Routledge