6 - Competing Claims to Maritime Jurisdiction in the Indian Ocean: Implications for Regional Marine Biodiversity and Fisheries

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The Indian Ocean encompasses an enormous maritime space that plays host to considerable marine resources including important marine biodiversity and fisheries resources. Substantial swaths of the Indian Ocean are subject to extensive national claims to maritime jurisdiction. These claims provide coastal states with access to the living and non-living resources of the Indian Ocean through the sovereignty and sovereign rights within their claimed zones of maritime jurisdiction and these claims, therefore, represent tremendous potential maritime opportunities. There are, however, considerable challenges to contend with in terms of realizing these opportunities. Indeed, the resource-related economic benefits that were generally anticipated to flow on from these broad maritime claims made by the predominantly developing Indian Ocean coastal states have largely not lived up to initial expectations.

This chapter explores the complex mosaic of maritime and territorial claims existing in the Indian Ocean. It provides an overview of the baselines and maritime zones claimed by the Indian Ocean littoral states in the context of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) (United Nations 1983). Particular reference is made to those claims arguably at odds with the relevant provisions of LOSC, notably arguably inappropriate baseline designations and excessive claims to maritime jurisdiction. Additionally, problematic unilateral and historical claims as well as sovereignty disputes over islands, together with their inevitable maritime jurisdictional implications, are examined. The consequences of these factors for the delimitation of maritime boundaries in the Indian Ocean are then considered.

The chapter then addresses some of the implications of this complex jurisdictional framework for Indian Ocean marine biodiversity and fisheries in the context of these extensive and complex jurisdictional claims. Clearly, the Indian Ocean littoral states benefit from significant maritime opportunities afforded to them through their broad claims to maritime jurisdiction. This is particularly the case in terms of coastal state sovereign rights over biodiversity and living resources within claimed EEZs. There are, however, a number of serious threats to marine biodiversity and fisheries in the Indian Ocean Region related to national claims to maritime jurisdiction, which are highlighted.