The Northern Sea Route: Problems of National Status Legitimization under International Law. Part I
Journal Title: Arctic and North - Year 2020, Vol 40, Issue 40
Abstract
The Northern Sea Route (NSR) for the Russian Federation is a strategically important maritime communication with the status of a historically established national transport artery. Despite its applicabil-ity to the Arctic, and therefore to the waters of the NSR, the norms and provisions of the modern international maritime law, and, first of all, the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Russia declares the important role of the national legislation on the regulation of navigation on the NSR. Such a situation is conditioned by the existing historical practice, the tacit agreement of most states, as well as the special environmental vulnerability of the Arctic region and the desire to prevent the marine environment pollution due to the navigation. Among the main opponents of this approach is the USA, which traditionally disputes the unified permitting regime for navigation along the NSR as an example of Russia's extremely broad interpretation of the norms and provisions of UNCLOS. The first part of the paper will show how those legal approaches used by Russia to introduce the national level of the NSR regulation, i.e., the concept of internal historical waters and the method of straight baselines, do not contradict UNCLOS, as they go beyond its limits and are based mostly on customary norms of international law (the so-called international custom) rather than treaties. The U.S. disagreement with such an assertion is discredited by the fact that Washington is not a full party to UNCLOS, and thus cannot fully enjoy all the prerogatives it has introduced.
Authors and Affiliations
Pavel A. GUDEV
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP690421
- DOI 10.37482/issn2221-2698.2020.40.142
- Views 244
- Downloads 0
Transport and infrastructural basis of the tourism development strategy in the Arkhangelsk Oblast
The article, devoted to the analysis of transport and geographical locations, describes possible strategies for the development of tourism in the Arkhangelsk Oblast. The main goal of the research was the development of l...
Recovery technology of social work — an important condition for maintaining and ensuring family safety (case of the Arkhangelsk Oblast)
Ensuring the social security of the modern family is an urgent issue and a priority of the national policy of the Russian Federation. In contemporary society, the relationship between the social security system and the r...
Arctic Council: Outcome of the First Year of the Icelandic Presidency
In the article based on the report of the Chairman of the Committee of Senior Officials in the Arctic Council, Einar Gunnarsson «Together on the road to a sustainable Arctic: one year in 2019-2021 of the presidency of Ic...
Tourist Attractiveness Based on the National and Territorial Identity of the Northern Region: The Example of the Republic of Karelia
This article raises an extremely relevant for Russia topic of domestic tourism as a driving factor of regional development at the socio-economic level. The region of study is the Republic of Karelia (RK). The object of t...
Analysis of Participation of Banking Institutions in the Strategic Development Programs of the Russian Arctic
The article examines the issues of financing the development of the Russian Arctic territories and the participation of banking structures in this process. A set of strategic documents for the development of the Arctic z...