Stand at ninety degrees north and every direction on a flat map becomes south.
What Country Are You Standing In At The North Pole?
Stand at ninety degrees north and every direction on a flat map becomes south. Under your boots there may be floating ice. Beneath the ice lies seawater, and thousands of metres below that lies seabed. Asking which country owns the North Pole sounds like a question about a single spot. International law gives different answers depending on how far down you look.
The geographic pole lies in the Arctic Ocean, beyond the territorial seas of the surrounding states. A person who arrives there on floating sea ice has not crossed a national land frontier at the pole. The ice itself drifts. A camp set up precisely at ninety degrees north can move away from the coordinate while its occupants sleep.
Why The Water And The Bottom Have Different Rules
Coastal states have sovereignty in their territorial seas and defined rights in their exclusive economic zones. An exclusive economic zone generally extends up to 200 nautical miles from the appropriate baselines, subject to boundaries with neighbours. Rights over resources there are extensive, while freedoms such as navigation remain important. The water at the geographic North Pole is beyond those zones.
The continental shelf is a separate legal concept covering the seabed and subsoil. Where the criteria are satisfied, a coastal state's continental shelf can extend beyond 200 nautical miles. Rights relating to the shelf concern exploration and exploitation of its natural resources. They do not turn the ocean above an extended shelf into the coastal state's territorial waters.
Picture a vessel at the surface above a potentially valuable deposit. The rules governing its voyage and those governing a proposal to drill down into the deposit answer different questions. Drawing one solid block of national colour from seabed to sky would conceal almost everything of interest about the location.
What Scientists Are Measuring Under The Ice
The shape and structure of the seabed matter to the outer limits of a shelf. States gather bathymetric and geological evidence about the underwater continuation of their land. Arctic ridges therefore appear in diplomatic stories alongside ships designed to operate in ice. The work is difficult partly because the evidence lies beneath an ocean in a region where field measurements are expensive.
The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf examines scientific submissions and makes recommendations about outer limits. Settling an overlapping boundary between states is a different matter. A headline announcing progress on a submission can therefore be accurate without meaning that a state has been awarded the North Pole.
Planting a flag makes a striking photograph and supplies none of the required geological evidence. An explorer may reach the pole, a ship may pass above it and a coastal state may argue for rights beneath it. To understand what any one of those achievements means, begin by asking where the action happened: on the ice, in the water or under the ocean floor.
