Maritime boundary

Maritime boundaries exist in the context of territorial waters, contiguous zones, and exclusive economic zones; however, the terminology does not encompass lake or river boundaries, which are considered within the context of land boundaries.

Some maritime boundaries have remained indeterminate despite efforts to clarify them. This is explained by an array of factors, some of which involve regional problems.

The delineation or delimitation of maritime boundaries has strategic, economic and environmental implications (see maritime delimitation).

Terminology

The terms boundary, frontier and border are often used as if they were interchangeable, but they are also terms with precise meanings.

A boundary is a line. The terms "frontier", "borderland" and "border" are zones of indeterminate width. Such areas form the outermost part of a country. Borders are bounded on one side by a national boundary. There are variations in the specific terminology of maritime boundary agreements which have been concluded since the 1970s. Such differences are less important than what is being delimited.

Features

Features that affect maritime boundaries include islands and the submerged seabed of the continental shelf.

The process of boundary delimitation in the ocean encompasses the natural prolongation of geological features and outlying territory. The process of establishing "positional" borders encompasses the distinction between previously resolved and never-resolved controversies.

Limits

The limits of maritime boundaries are expressed in polylines and in polygon layers of sovereignty and control, calculated from the declaration of a baseline. The conditions under which a state may establish such baseline are described in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). A baseline of a country can be the low water line, a straight baseline (a line that encloses bays, estuaries, inland waters,...) or a combination of the two.

Classification

Maritime spaces can be divided into the following groups based on their legal status:

• Maritime spaces under the sovereignty and authority (exercising power) of a coastal State: internal waters, territorial sea, and archipelagic waters,
• Maritime spaces with mixed legal regime, which fall under both the jurisdiction of the coastal State and under the international law: contiguous zone, the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone, and
• Maritime spaces that can be used by all States (including land-locked ones) on an equal basis: high seas.

While many maritime spaces can be classified as belonging to the same group, this does not imply that they all have the same legal regime. International straits and canals have their own legal status as well.

Zones

The zones of maritime boundaries are expressed in concentric limits surrounding coastal and feature baselines.

• Inland waters—the zone inside the baseline.
• Territorial sea—the zone extending 12 nautical miles (nm) from the baseline.
• Contiguous zone—the area extending 24 nm from the baseline.
• Exclusive Economic Zone—the area extending 200 nm from the baseline except when the space between two countries is less than 400 nm.

In the case of overlapping zones, the boundary is presumed to conform to the equidistance principle or it is explicitly described in a multilateral treaty.

Contemporary negotiations have produced tripoint and quadripoint determinations. For example, in the 1982 Australia–France Marine Delimitation Agreement, for the purposes of drawing the treaty's equidistant lines it was assumed that France has sovereignty over Matthew and Hunter Islands, a territory that is also claimed by Vanuatu. The northernmost point in the boundary is a tripoint with the Solomon Islands. The boundary runs in a roughly north–south direction and then turns and runs west–east until it almost reaches the 170th meridian east.