Ottawa and Washington will negotiate territorial sovereignty over the Arctic seabed

Canada hopes to follow the process set out in the UN treaty even though the United States has not ratified UNCLOS, a large treaty, Grantley Franklin, a spokesman for Canada's Foreign Ministry, said in an email. Multilateral scope

Canada and the United States maintain frequent contact on the Arctic continental shelf and have expressed their commitment, along with other Arctic states, to an orderly resolution of overlapping claims.Franklin wrote.

Washington submitted its sovereignty claim last month to the United Nations agency that reviews such requests.

As expected, US claims cover a large portion of the Beaufort Sea floor, a marine area that Canada asserts is part of its national territory.

It's something we always suspected they would do.said Rob Hubert, a professor at the Center for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

The Americans have been very careful not to overlap their territorial claims with the Russians, but they have not been so careful with ours.

A large part of the territorial dispute concerns how the border between the two countries should be drawn on the Arctic seabed.

Canada wants the territorial demarcation to extend directly north from the 141st meridian, while the United States wants this boundary line to be drawn at a 90-degree angle to the coast.

The United Nations treaty grants states rights to the seabed and its natural resources as long as they are able to prove that their continental shelf extends beyond 200 nautical miles from their coasts and that it constitutes a natural extension of that continental shelf.

Rights related to an extended continental shelf do not include control over things such as fishing or shipping.

The United Nations does not rule regarding the maritime boundaries and outer limits of countries' continental shelves, but rather evaluates the scientific data that supports each side's claims and then leaves it to them to negotiate an agreement.

Although Washington has never signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Americans have committed to respecting this framework.

The United States believes that this definition [de la convención] of the continental shelf as customary international law and adhered to this definition when demarcating the boundaries of its continental shelfWritten by Grantley Franklin, a spokesman for the Canadian Foreign Ministry.

Hubert explained that the United States' decision to join the agreement is good news for the rule of international law.

On the other hand, Canada's willingness to work with a country still outside the agreement could weaken the treaty, but given the slim chance of the United States signing it soon, Hubert described Ottawa's decision as Politically smart.

Tense climate

Professor Hubert noted that Canada, which submitted its application in 2019, now has territorial claims that overlap with the territorial claims of Russia, Denmark and the United States.

All of our Arctic neighbors have relationships with usHubert stated, adding that increasing geopolitical tensions around the world will not make the task of drawing these territorial demarcation lines any easier.

You have to solve problems peacefully if you are part of the agreement, but we must add to this the current geopolitical situation. We find ourselves in an environment of conflict, primarily with Russia, and now with two of our main allies (Denmark and the United States). It's an unpleasant combination.

Canada's territorial claim would place 1.2 million square kilometers of seabed under Canadian sovereignty, an area the size of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan combined.

The American Asian Basin, which includes the disputed Beaufort Sea region, is estimated to contain significant oil reserves.

The USGS estimates it could contain up to 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent, although this number is a probabilistic assessment based on Arctic geology and is not an exact number.

The UN body responsible for assessing the quality of scientific data on each country's continental shelf extension claims will take several years to make a decision.

Source: RC/PC

Adaptation: RCI/R. Valencia