Territorial Claims To The North Pole and Arctic Regions
Main article: Territorial claims in the ArcticUnder international law, no country currently owns the North Pole or the region of the Arctic Ocean surrounding it. The five surrounding Arctic countries, Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark (via Greenland), and the United States (via Alaska), are limited to a 200-nautical-mile (370 km; 230 mi) exclusive economic zone around their coasts, and the area beyond that is administered by the International Seabed Authority.
Upon ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country has a ten year period to make claims to an extended continental shelf beyond its 200 mile exclusive economic zone. If accepted, such a claim gives the claimant state rights to what may be on or beneath the sea bottom within the claimed zone. Norway (ratified the convention in 1996), Russia (ratified in 1997), Canada (ratified in 2003) and Denmark (ratified in 2004) have all launched projects to base claims that certain areas of Arctic continental shelves should be subject to their sole sovereign exploitation.
In 1907 Canada invoked a "sector principle" to claim sovereignty over a sector stretching from its coasts to the North Pole. Although this claim has not been relinquished, neither has it been consistently pressed.
Read more about this topic: North Pole
Famous quotes containing the words territorial, claims, north, pole, arctic and/or regions:
“All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth—including America, of course—consist of pilferings from other people’s wash.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Who claims that the heathen’s view of the world is incorrect? Life gives you nothing! It is ruled by false gods! Nothing remains true to you but your own self; provided you remain true to it.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“I meet him at every turn. He is more alive than ever he was. He has earned immortality. He is not confined to North Elba nor to Kansas. He is no longer working in secret. He works in public, and in the clearest light that shines on this land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Oh Sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“It is doubtful whether anyone who has travelled widely has found anywhere in the world regions more ugly than in the human face.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)