Legal Regulation of Arctic Marine Bioresources Development: International Law and State Cooperation Mechanisms

Abstract

Legal regulation of the development of marine resources in the Arctic is carried out in accordance with international treaties and the legislation of coastal states. International legal regulation of the extraction of marine living resources is carried out at different levels of international legal regulation — universal, regional and local. Regional international treaties aimed at regulating the extraction of marine living resources, which would extend to all the maritime areas of the Arctic or to the Arctic Ocean, are absent now. Among the universal international treaties include a series of treaties governing the legal regime of the maritime spaces within which sets out regulations governing the production of marine living resources in their regulatory kinds of maritime areas, as well as treaties with other subject of legal regulation. Subregional treaties on the regulation of the extraction of marine living resources in the Arctic marine spaces can be classified into two main categories: treaties regulating the fishing of a specific type of marine living resources that inhabit the marine spaces of the Arctic, as well as treaties dealing with fishing in various marine spaces that are part of the Arctic waters. The effect of such treaties extends to certain parts of the waters of the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The International local treaties regulate relations regarding the extraction of marine living resources between states located in close proximity to each other and having adjacent sea spaces. The main objects of the relevant international treaties are social relations between states bordering each other on the delimitation of maritime spaces. And in this regard, the state determines the legal regime for the extraction of marine living resources in the border waters. Each Arctic state has adopted its own legislation on the harvesting of marine living resources in the region. The cooperation of states in this sphere of activity is carried out both in the bilateral and multilateral international cooperation. One of the major problems of international legal regulation of fishing of marine living resources is the lack of international treaties that could be directed at regulating the fishing of marine mammals in the Arctic, with the exception of a few treaties applicable to the Arctic marine environment on a common basis.