Accountability and the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf: Deciding Who Owns the Ocean Floor

Anna Cavnar, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton

Abstract

Over the past decade, scholars and government officials have become increasingly concerned that the world is building an international institutional infrastructure that is unaccountable to the states and individuals it supposedly serves. This Article takes the question of accountability to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (the "Commission" or "CLCS"), the international body charged with overseeing delineation of the outer continental shelf – a process which will eventually give more than sixty countries exclusive control over millions of square kilometers of seabed and the resources, including potentially vast oil and gas deposits, found within it. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ("UNCLOS") gives all coastal states jurisdiction over the 200 nautical miles of continental shelf adjacent to their coastlines; the seafloor beyond is part of the deep seabed to which all states have equal and non-exclusive rights. Under UNCLOS article 76, however, certain countries have the right to make “extended claims” to up to 350 nautical miles of the shelf, based on a complicated technical and legal formula found in article 76. But before states can assert these claims, they must be reviewed and approved by the CLCS, a panel of 20 experts in geology, geomorphology and hydrology that has the power to accept, modify or completely reject a state’s extended shelf claim. This Article asks whether, in making these determinations, the CLCS is held sufficiently accountable to the states in whose interest it is supposed to act. In responding no, the paper provides an in-depth analysis of the Commission’s mandate and power, and presents several reasons why, given its unique position, it should be held accountable to the UNCLOS Parties who created it. It then explores accountability gaps in existing CLCS procedures and proposes a number of reforms that may be able to fill those gaps.