Legal Regime of Artificial Islands and Other Permanent Structures at Sea
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction. The 1969 Report of the UN General Secretary noted that 125 fixed platforms were used in offshore areas for the purpose of oil industry. “The International Law of the Sea” (Vol. 1 and 2) published in UK in 1994 provides that “approximately 6000 fixed platforms have been installed in offshore areas throughout the world”. In 2014 only in the area of the OSPAR Convention, 1992, more than 1300 offshore constructions were installed. As for January 2018, the majority of these constructions are in the North Sea (184), the Gulf of Mexico (175), the Persian Gulf (159), and offshore of Far East Asia (152) and Southeast Asia (152). In the other regions this number varies from 3 to 88, while the Canadian Arctic has the smallest number of offshore constructions limited to just 1 object. Accordingly, the issues of interpretation of UNCLOS articles on legal regime of artificial islands and other fixed structures at sea are becoming more pressing. Moreover, the interstate relations, regarding construction of artificial islands in offshore areas, need relevant legal framework to be in place, taking into account the constant growth of economic and military “competition” among countries, as well as the development of science and technologies applicable to offshore construction. Materials and methods . This paper dwells upon the international treaties and other legal instruments, which rely upon the terms “artificial islands”, “installations”, “structures” at sea for regulating relations among States and between States and other international law subjects. The materials for this paper are also commentaries of the UNCLOS, interpretation of the relevant articles of 1958 Geneva maritime conventions, applicable resolutions of the International Maritime Organization, and also definitions of the conventional terms suggested by scholars. The methodological basis of the research consists of general scientific and specific methods, including comparative method. Research results . Most specialists in the law of the sea who research similar topics dwell upon their personal definitions of the conventional terms mentioned above. Such specialists correctly note that the absence of such definitions in UNCLOS makes it difficult to interpret and apply relevant articles in a proper way. Meanwhile, the necessity for such interpretation and application is of practical value because such terms of UNCLOS relate firstly to relevant rights and jurisdiction of coastal and other States in maritime areas where artificial islands, installations and structures are used, including the territorial sea, the EEZ and the continental shelf. Nevertheless lots of different definitions of such terms suggested by scholars make it even more difficult to interpret and apply the rules of UNCLOS on artificial islands, installations and structures, including such sensitive areas of interstate relations as safety at sea and protection of the marine environment. Discussion and conclusions . The authors of this paper do not support any classification or definition of “artificial islands”, “installations” or “structures” or any other definition of other specific words used in UNCLOS for such terms. Instead the authors bring arguments to legal delineation of artificial islands from any other permanent structure at sea independently of the fact which particular word is used in UNCLOS for describing such a structure in a relevant article (“installations”, “structures”, “devices”, “equipment” etc.). It is argued in this paper that such legal delineation is caused by a difficult and comprehensive balance of interests achieved during the III Conference on the Law of the Sea, and such interests relating to economic, military, environmental interests of States, coastal and non-coastal, firstly in the EEZ and on the continental shelf.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".