CAS IR 573 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Arctic Council, Gulf Stream
10 May 2019
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Document Summary
Polar regions: special problem for international law because they are too inhospitable for human occupation. Not only temperatures but also the long nights 6 months of no sun. No states in the polar regions but various states have made territorial claims. 2 methods to make these claims: sector theory: connect eastern and western most extremities to the pole and then lay claim to any island or territory that lie between the poles and the pole itself. It has no basis in international law (no convention) but is a practice: discovery: explorer of some country for their country. One country that has been very active in arctic and antarctic research is norway. But number of countries have direct interest: russia (longest coastline) because of siberia, norway, greenland: that is why greenland is so important to denmark, alaska, usa, canada, svalbard, norway: most extreme permanently inhabited population. Sustained by gulf stream, warm water going up the ocean.
