Suchergebnisse

In the last two decades, there have been three major international adjudications on continental shelf boundaries between states. Three additional cases are now pending before international tribunals. Two concern continental shelf boundaries and the other, a single exclusive economic zone and continental shelf boundary. There is every reason to believe that more cases are on the way. During this period, many international agreements have been negotiated to settle similar international ocean boundary disputes. Nevertheless, the vast majority of such boundaries have yet to be resolved.

International law needs to respond to the dual pressures for change brought on by rapid technological development and the promulgation of the "New International Economic Order." While a number of major international negotiations have been mounted in recent years to respond to these pressures, all of them have failed to meet expectations. The value of international law in shaping and stabilizing international behavior will certainly diminish unless the performance of these international negotiations is improved or other methods for effectuating change are found. It is the purpose of this article to explore some of the procedures that the international community has used to respond to these pressures and to suggest areas for improvement or further exploration.

In 1976 the United States Congress established the Coastal Energy Impact Program (CEIP) for the purpose of giving financial assistance to those coastal states of the United States off whose shores resource development was being conducted on the outer continental shelf. The program was designed to alleviate the burden that offshore development was said to have placed on those coastal states. The enacting legislation stipulated that the states must comply with certain requirements of the Act in exchange for the distribution of federal funds. Although these funds were to be provided partly in the form of grants distributed on the basis of various statutory formulas, the largest amount of the grants was to be divided on the basis of adjacency. Thus, a coastal state would receive additional funds if the activity on the outer continental shelf took place in the area determined to be "adjacent" to that state. As a result, the geographical description of the areas "adjacent" to each coastal state had a direct impact on the amount of funds each state would realize from the program. Statutory provisions and the regulations required that adjacency be determined on the basis of lateral boundaries drawn in the ocean seaward from the coastal state. Those boundaries might already have been established on the basis of interstate agreements or court decisions. In the absence of such delimitations, the Assistant Administrator for Coastal Zone Management of the Department of Commerce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was called upon to establish the "lateral seaward boundaries" on the basis of the international law applicable to lateral boundary delimitations. The "lateral seaward boundaries" so established by the Assistant Administrator would have no legal significance other than for CEIP purposes.