Economics And The Law Of The Sea Negotiations

The Law of the Sea (LOS) treaty resulted from some of the most complicated multilateral negotiations ever conducted. Difficult bargaining produced a remarkably sophisticated agreement on the financial aspects of deep ocean mining and on the financing of a new international mining entity. This book analyzes those negotiations along with the abrupt U.S. rejection of their results. Building from this episode, it derives important and subtle general rules and propositions for reaching superior, sustainable agreements in complex bargaining situations. James Sebenius shows how agreements were possible among the parties because and not in spite of differences in their values, expectations, and attitudes toward time and risk. He shows how linking separately intractable issues can generate a zone of possible agreement. He analyzes the extensive role of a computer model in the LOS talks. Finally, he argues that in many negotiations neither the issues nor the parties are fixed and develops analytic techniques that predict how the addition or deletion of either issues or parties may affect the process of reaching agreement.

The task of the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (1967-82) was to create a new ocean regime. Participants negotiated every major issue of ocean use: jurisdiction in the coastal and contiguous zones, the territorial sea, and the new two-hundred-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ); transit and overflight through straits and archipelagos; fisheries management in the EEZs and high seas; ocean environmental obligations; the right to conduct ocean science; and the management of deep seabed mineral exploitation. Negotiating the treaty required more than fifteen years and the consent of more than one hundred and fifty nations. The resulting treaty, composed of three hundred and twenty articles plus seven major annexes, represents the final product of the largest, longest, and most complex formal negotiation in modern times. Negotiating the New Ocean Regime analyzes both the substance of the problems at hand - what should be done about the oceans - and the process of the bargaining and negotiating. With law and history as a background, Robert Friedheim uses regime theory and resource economics to analyze ocean problems and bargaining/cooperation theory of negotiation. To evaluate the treaty through the eyes of the stakeholders, the author employs a multi-attribute utility model. Finally, he assesses the bargaining system - parliamentary diplomacy with consensus as the decisive rule - for its usefulness, limitations, and applicability to other current global problems.

"May 2009."--T.p.

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Both developed and developing nations attended the Law of the Sea Conference and, in general, subscribe to the principle that the oceans beyond national jurisdiction are the common heritage of mankind. However, the interpretation each group has of this principle differs. The objective of the United States delegation is to achieve a comprehensive treaty that protects essential United States' interests. The following principle issues were discussed at the 1977 and 1978 conference sessions. The assurance of access to mineral resources of the deep seabed for private contractors or states parties under reasonable terms is central to the success of the treaty. An International Seabed Authority should be established under the treaty to administer the common heritage concept in the best interest of mankind. The International Seabed Authority would have numerous sources of funds, such as various types of payments made by contractors or others exploring the seabed mineral resources, voluntary contributions, excess revenues generated by operations of the Enterprise and loans from commercial sources. The obligations of private and/or state contractors to the Authority can be characterized as monetary payments, technology transfers, and production restraint. The treaty text currently proposes four methods of dispute settlement: the International Court of Justice, the Law of the Sea Tribunal and its Seabed Disputes Chamber, arbitration procedures, and a special arbitral tribunal made up of experts. Opinions differ as to what the boundaries of the outer limit of the continental shelf beyond 200 miles should be. The marine scientific research text provides for coastal state consent for marine scientific research in the economic zone. The major marine environmental concern is accommodation of navigational and environmental interests.