Who has ownership over the oceans?

Essential Insights

Who holds claim to the world's oceans? This is a valid inquiry. We partition Earth's land through conflict, conquest, and colonization. Rivers, mountains, and entire continents serve as natural boundaries on land. However, the oceans lack visible surface features—just a vast, uninterrupted stretch of saltwater. They are interconnected, with the planet's five oceans forming a single global ocean that blankets 71 percent of the Earth [source: NOAA].

This complexity makes it challenging to divide, meaning the oceans ultimately belong to you. You and the other 6.6 billion people inhabiting Earth today [source: CIA]. While we all share ownership of the oceans, in reality, none of us truly own them. It’s a paradoxical situation.

For centuries, starting with the Age of Exploration when ships capable of global travel were developed, governments representing individuals like you, the ocean's stakeholders, agreed that no single entity owned the oceans. This informal consensus was known as the Freedom of the Seas doctrine, also romantically termed the Law of the Sea.

The doctrine allocated exclusive rights to a three-mile stretch of ocean adjacent to a coastal nation's borders. These waters extended a nation's land boundaries into the sea, and any hostile or unauthorized entry by a foreign power was considered an invasion of sovereign territory. The vast majority of the ocean was designated for shared use by all nations, including those without coastlines, for trade and commerce. Since the oceans are international, an attack on another nation's vessel in open waters could be seen as an act of war.

This principle led the United States into two conflicts: the War of 1812 and World War I. The U.S. staunchly upheld the Freedom of the Seas doctrine, defending it with military force. However, it was also the U.S. that disrupted the doctrine in 1945 by unilaterally extending its coastal waters from three miles to 200 miles, reaching the continental shelf [source: Water Encyclopedia]. This triggered a scramble among coastal nations to claim larger maritime territories, leading to tensions where these new boundaries overlapped.

At the heart of this change in how ocean ownership was perceived lay, as with most matters, financial interests.

Who cares about ocean ownership?

The Age of Exploration swiftly transitioned into an era of colonialism. European nations ventured to both ancient and newly discovered lands, annexing them as extensions of their own territories. This led to conflicts with other nations over land and the tragic genocide of indigenous populations. The abundant raw materials in these regions promised immense wealth for the colonizers, yet centuries of resource exploitation had taught Europeans that land-based resources were ultimately exhaustible.

It took time for this understanding to extend to the oceans. While humans successfully circumnavigated the globe in A.D. 1522, they had inhabited land for 195,000 years [source: University of Utah]. Given the vastness of the oceans and the technological limitations in extracting their resources, it was believed that humans could never deplete them. This belief shifted dramatically in the mid-20th century.

Oil exploration and extraction technologies advanced rapidly, prompting nations to aggressively claim as much oil, natural gas, and minerals from the oceans as possible. With no formal treaties or international laws governing oceans, governments had little legal grounds to oppose such encroachments. The oceans, once a shared global resource for centuries, were now being divided haphazardly.

Ironically, the very oil and gas extracted from the world's oceans began to contaminate them. Tankers transporting petroleum sometimes spill their cargo into the sea. Even those that successfully deliver their loads from one destination to another leave behind diesel emissions, further polluting the waters.

Since most of the ocean is regarded as shared territory, the fisheries within these areas are also considered common property. Commercial fishing fleets from any nation can access prime fishing grounds in international waters. This collective exploitation rapidly depletes fish stocks, and the high volume of traffic in these zones disproportionately harms local ecosystems. Technological advancements in resource extraction accelerated dramatically. In 1954, annual maritime oil production was under one million tons, but by the late 1960s, it surged to nearly 400 million tons per year [source: UN].

The economic significance of the oceans, driven by industries like fishing, shipping, and mining, is immense. In 2004, the United States alone generated $63 billion in wages from ocean-related activities [source: NOEP]. However, the financial gains from these activities also had harmful consequences. It became evident that human activities were poisoning marine life beneath the water's surface.

In 1967, the United Nations first considered intervening to create a formal international treaty, marking the first new agreement on ocean governance in three centuries.

­

The U.N. and Modern Ocean Claims

In November 1967, the Maltese delegate to the United Nations was the first to advocate for the U.N. to leverage its collective influence to establish a fair and responsible framework for the use of the world's oceans. After 15 years of negotiations, a nine-year conference culminated in the creation of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Finalized in 1982 and enacted in 1994, the treaty formalized existing practices, such as the Law of the Sea. International waters were reaffirmed as "the common heritage of all mankind" [source: UN]. The agreement also set limits on the extent of coastal waters and seabed a nation could claim. The territorial sea, extending a nation's land boundaries into the ocean, was defined as 12 nautical miles (13.8 miles or 22.2 km).

The convention also provided precise definitions for different types of waters. Straits, for instance, are narrow passages between two land masses (often owned by separate nations) that connect larger bodies of water. Typically narrower than the 12-mile territorial sea limit, straits are invaluable for shipping and defense, serving as vital passageways. Despite their proximity to sovereign territories, straits have historically been treated as international waters, a status upheld by the U.N.

The convention also introduced key legislation, such as prohibiting nuclear weapons testing in international waters, forming a panel focused on ocean conservation, and, most notably, establishing the concept of exclusive economic zones (EEZ). While territorial waters extend a nation's legal and defensive jurisdiction, EEZs grant coastal states exclusive rights to offshore resources. EEZs stretch up to 200 miles (322 km) from the shoreline [source: Water Encyclopedia], encompassing all organic and mineral resources within this zone as the sole property of the coastal nation.

However, EEZs created a conflict. Post-World War II, nations like the United States had defined their maritime boundaries based on the continental shelf, the shallow seabed extending from the coast to the continental slope (approximately 200 meters or 650 feet deep). The new 200-mile (322 km) EEZ limit reduced some nations' claims. To address this, the U.N. allowed countries with extensive continental shelves to expand their EEZs up to 350 miles (563 km), provided they could provide geological evidence of the shelf's reach.

Since then, coastal nations have sought geological data to extend their EEZs from 200 to 350 miles (322 to 563 km). In the Arctic Ocean, a modern-day resource race reminiscent of the 1945 U.S. sea grab is underway, involving the U.S., Canada, Greenland, Denmark, Norway, and Russia. These nations are competing to claim sovereignty over the Arctic seabed, believed to hold an estimated 25 percent of the world's remaining untapped oil and natural gas reserves [source: Geology].

The growing interest in Arctic resources is driven by melting ice, a consequence of climate change. As the ice recedes, accessing these minerals becomes more feasible and cost-effective. However, the melting ice also poses a challenge: rising sea levels will shift coastlines inland, potentially moving sovereign boundaries away from the Arctic's resources. This scenario may necessitate a new U.N. convention, as history shows nations often bend the rules when competing for the oceans' natural riches.

­