Treatment of ridges and borderlands under Article 76 of the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea: The example of the Arctic Ocean

Questions have been raised about the approach taken or considered by some countries in applying article 76 to areas of the ocean that are richly endowed with oceanic ridges and continental borderlands, such as the Arctic Ocean. This paper examines the relevance of the geologic enviromnent of the oceanic ridges and borderlands of the central Arctic Ocean Basin to the application of article 76 to such features in the Arctic and elsewhere. The central Arctic Ocean Basin consists of two extensional sub-basins which contain a total of three continental borderlands-- Yermak Plateau and the Morris Jesup and Chukchi Borderlands that consist of plateaus and spurs (short ridges) that project into the central Arctic Ocean Basin from the surrounding continental shelves. The crestal elevations of the borderlands are similar to those of the adjoining outer continental shelves at their junctures with the shelves, and the borderlands are "natural prolongations" of the land territories of the adjacent coastal States. In contrast to the borderlands, the through-going ridges of the oceanic central Arctic Ocean Basin, Gakkel, Lomonosov, and Alpha-Mendeleev lie wholly within the confines of the central basin and arc., therefore part of the deep ocean floor. They are not "natural prolongations" of the land territories of the adjacent coastal States. Such ridges do not provide a basis for projecting the juridical continental margins of article 76 across adjacent areas of the central Arctic Ocean Basin or other oceanic areas in the World Ocean.