Marine Biology 8th Edition by Peter Castro,Michael Huber

Exercise 2

The Fourth United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea made no provisions for Antarctica. Some of the land is probably rich in resources like oil, so the eventual exploitation of the land is probably inevitable. Several nations have already established claims, sometimes overlapping each other, to section off the continent. How would you deal with these claims? Would you give first preference to nations, like Argentina or New Zealand, that claim geographic proximity to the continent or to those, like Norway or Britain, that arrived at the claimed land first? How can resources be exploited if it is decided that the land does not belong to any particular nation?