The Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea (formerly K.G. Jebsen Centre for the Law of the Sea) was established on 1 September 2013. The Centre is located at the Faculty of Law, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø.
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The objective of NCLOS – a UiT Aurora Centre is to carry out a systematic assessment of the limits and possibilities of the law of the sea in achieving global goals of ocean resilience and sustainability, and on this basis identify possible future legal responses. The research is organized in four main themes:
The aim of WP I Ocean Spaces is to investigate and problematize the limits and possibilities of the current spatial architecture of the oceans.
WPI explores whether the current spatial architecture can respond to the challenges posed to it by ocean connectivity of currents, species and domains. A particularly important dimension is the land-sea interface, where WPI will investigate the limits and possibilities of thinking land and sea together within the current LOSOG framework, assessing to what degree the relevant legal regimes are able to address and respond to the emerging issues threatening the marine environment, such as climate change, marine plastic pollution and ocean acidification. Finally, WPI will explore alternative legal constructions of ocean space.
The research conducted in WPI will shed light on one of the main hypothesis of the Aurora Center: The legal architecture of ocean space is not suited to ensure ocean resilience and sustainability, and contribute to the main research question of the Centre: What are the limits and possibilities of the current LOSOG framework to adapt and respond to the intertwined systemic challenges? And what are the possible future trajectories for LOSOG?
Key participants: Busch, Dahl, De Lucia, Hey, Lott, Molenaar, Poto, Ranganathan, Solski.
International partners: Braverman, Trevisanut, Scott, Kotsakis
The aim of WP II Sovereignty is to explore the limits and possibilities of sovereignty as this is the logic and central legal principle underpinning the law of the sea and ocean governance (LOSOG).
Sovereignty is at the core of understanding international law. In the evolution of LOSOG, there has been a debate on how to govern the seas and how to balance sovereignty and freedom of the seas. Sovereignty and sovereign rights have been the selected legal device to deal with challenges such as overexploitation of natural resources. For example, through the extension of the limits of the territorial sea and the establishment of the exclusive economic zone, which have provided the coastal states with increased competence to regulate fishing and other human activities. Yet, today sovereignty is challenged in the face of current and new challenges, in particular environmental threats such as common concern and biodiversity loss. The WP problematizes sovereignty and investigates how sovereignty could be redefined, adapted to and rethought to respond to such new global systemic challenges. This research will contribute to the main research question of the Aurora Center: What are the limits and possibilities of the current LOSOG framework to adapt and respond to the intertwined systemic challenges? And what are the possible future legal trajectories for LOSOG?
Key participants: Dahl, das Neves, De Lucia, Frostad, Johansen, Solski, Torp Helmersen.
International partners: Ringbom, Tanaka, Trevisanut, Scott.
The WP aims to deconstruct and reconstruct the concept(s) of ocean commons, to investigate its legal character and how it may promote common interests and ocean justice.
The research is organized through three tasks:
Task 1: Interrogating ocean commons
This task will interrogate the category of ocean commons in all their nuances, including emerging or intangible ones such as the protection of the marine environment, the conservation of biodiversity and ocean knowledge, in order to prepare the terrain for tasks 2 and 3.
Task 2: Limits and possibilities of the governance of ocean commons
This task will problematize the category of ocean commons in terms of their ontology, their spatial dimension, and their legal regimes. More in details, the task will assess the status, role, limits and possibilities of key principles for the governance of ocean commons, and seek to uncover which interests are protected by the array of different instruments that apply to ocean commons. Important aspects to explore will be, inter alia, whether the principles of the freedom of the high seas and the common heritage of mankind remain relevant today, and the potential implications of the principle of common concern to transcend traditional spatial and jurisdictional views of ocean commons.
Task 3: Rethinking ocean commons
This task, on the basis of tasks 1 and 2, aims at rethinking the governance of ocean commons. It will include investigations of the impact of the BBNJ process on the legal status quo and whether the potential new agreement is able to address the complexities involved in the governance of the ocean commons. This task will also link with the fragmented functional and spatial architecture of ocean, and how that affects the question of ocean justice, the balancing 10 between common interests and the interests of the individual costal states and the definition of ocean commons. One element in this task, shared with task 3 of WP II, will be to explore the role of non-sovereign agency (indigenous peoples, nature) and alternative legalities (e.g. legal pluralism) for the governance of ocean commons and in relation to ocean justice.
Key participants: De Lucia, Henriksen, Hey, Jakobsen, Johansen, Poto, Ranganathan.
International partners: Harrison, Mossop, Scott
This WP aims to gradually integrate research done under other WPs, and reflect on, develop, and propose new perspectives to, and trajectories for, legal research and for the substantive framework of LOSOG, with the view of being able to respond to the systemic challenges.
This is done through the following tasks:
Task 1: Regional Arctic Ocean governance: A case study
This task utilizes a regional case study to bring to bear and integrate the research carried out in the other WPs. The choice of the Arctic reflects is special vulnerabilities to environmental change, its special position with respect to geopolitical interests, and the geo-localization of the Centre.
Task 2: Future trajectories
This task will coordinate the articulation of future trajectories for sustainable oceans that will have emerged in the other WPs with the view of integrating them into a coherent set of proposals for the legal research community and for policy makers.
Participants: All project group members and partners
The law of the sea is facing fundamental challenges, raising questions on its relevance and adequacy. One of the challenges is the diverse and interconnected socio-economic pressures, including climate change, overfishing and loss of biodiversity. A second challenge is an epistemic, as the ecological models on which the law of the sea is premised do not adequately address how spaces are connected through ecological and oceanographic processes and human activities. A third fundamental challenge is justice and geopolitical dynamics, where justice have become an important element in the on-going negotiations for a new agreement on the conservation and management of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
These challenges to the law of the sea are reflected in three hypotheses that provides the basis for the research at the UiT Aurora Centre:
The legal architecture of ocean space is not suited to ensure ocean resilience and sustainability
The logic of sovereignty needs to be problematised
The governance of oceans commons needs to be reassessed
To test the hypotheses and achieve the objective, the Centre will adopt a rich and pluralistic theoretical and methodological approach. The doctrinal legal research will be supplemented by a law in context approach. Law in context, a interdisciplinary approach broadens the law from within from social, political and ecological contexts.
Apostolos Tsiouvalas is a PhD Candidate at the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea. His research is dealing with the conceptualization of marine space in legal thought and seeks to problematize the way sovereignty interacts with the phenomenon of ‘mobility’ in the world’s oceans.
To encapsulate an ontological understanding of ocean mobility that may reflect more-than-human and Indigenous ways of moving in (and with) space, his dissertation employs the Aristotelian idea of kinesis as a conceptual lens.The project further looks at how legal narratives shape spatial thinking, and how non-state understandings of motion could inform the existing legal architecture of the oceans.
Jurisprudence has been most commonly concerned with how mobility in the world’s oceans is shaped by environmental threads. Environmental factors are thus seen as main drivers of mobility, while law itself tends to conceptualize ‘mobility’ merely as an ‘emerging problem’ that needs to be halted or solved.
Albeit the causality of unprecedent ocean mobility to environmental factors is not debatable, it is important to realize that mobility may also be an ontological stance, a quality of the universe that has been there all the way along, even if previously disregarded or conceptualized as a ‘problem’ by Western legal thought.
This doctoral project thus seeks to confirm the presumption that law of the sea has to come to terms with the mobility in the world’s oceans linked to environmental threats. It seeks to expose the limitations of the existing oceanic legal imaginary in place and theorize a new ontology of ocean kinēsis for international law, decoupling from its intrinsic tendency towards inertia.
In addition to being a PhD-student at NCLOs Apostolous is also a Research Associate for The Arctic Institute, Center Circumpolar Security Studies, based in Washington D.C., and editor-in-chief of the Arctic Institute’s weekly publication, The Arctic This Week. His main research interests revolve around legal anthropology, new materialism(s), legal pluralism, indigenous rights and environmental law in the Arctic. Not least, he is fascinated by ‘law and comics’ approaches and critical jurisprudence in general.
Apostolos holds an LL.M. degree in Polar Law from the University of Akureyri in Iceland, an MPhil degree in the field of Philosophy in Indigenous Studies from the University of Tromsø, Norway, and a BA degree in Law from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has also undertaken 12 months exchange mobility at the University of Trier in Germany in 2014 and at the University of Tromsø in 2018.
Prior to his employment at NCLOS, Apostolos carried out an internship at the Law Faculty of the University of Tromsø, providing research assistance to the former K.G. Jebsen Center for the Law of the Sea and the Sami Law Research Group.
During the summer of 2018, Apostolos also undertook twin internships with the Stefánsson Arctic Institute, a leading Arctic research body in Iceland, and the PAME Working Group of the Arctic Council, engaging in the projects ‘Sustainable Economies in the Arctic’ and ‘Arctic Marine Strategic Plan’ respectively.
After his move to Norway, his collaboration with the Stefánsson Arctic Institute continued remotely, including fieldwork for the project ‘Arctic Youth and Sustainable Future’. In the past, Apostolos has also served as trainee lawyer for the Thessaloniki's Bar Association.
For a comprehensive list of Apostolos research outcomes and current areas of interest, look here.
Bjørn Bakke, PhD-student at NCLOS is writing a thesis about environmental principles in the Norwegian Marine Resources Act.
We had a chat with Bjørn Bakke, PhD student at the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea (NCLOS) about the topic he has devoted the last four years of his life to. Namely the importance of environmental law principles for fisheries management according to the Marine Resources Act.
At the outset, Bakke points out that the Norwegian fisheries management is, overall, very well-functioning. - There is a system where environmental principles have been implemented both at the constitutional level, in sector legislation (for example the Marine Resources Act), and in the Nature Diversity Act, which is cross-sectoral. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement, he states.
When Bakke began the work on his dissertation, his hypothesis was that statutory environmental principles at least to a certain extent is hot air. - It is stated in the Marine Resources Act § 7 second paragraph letter b that the ecosystem approach shall be a key consideration when applying the law. However, if one looks to the preparatory work, it is stated that the principle has a distinctly political character and is not suitable for judicial review. What is it then that you have passed into the law, Bakke asks rhetorically?
Another vague concept is "sustainable development". - A common problem is that you use the term sustainability without clarifying its content and context. It is not always easy to know whether the term is used to imply political sustainability, economic sustainability, or ecological sustainability, he points out.
Bakke believes that the explanation may lie in the fact that environmental law concepts are often derived from international law and international politics. – These principles are often adopted in consensus-based processes. This means that the countries that are the least willing to lead with ambitious environmental policies often have the last word when it comes to the concrete meaning of a term, he states.
The Marine Resources Act is an authorization law, i.e., the Norwegian parliament, through the Act, gives other administrative bodies a limited authority to make general rules and individual decisions. Whether to build up or downsize a fish stock will always be a matter of priorities. But this does not mean that the fisheries administration can decide to do whatever they may want.
- It is clear that the environmental principles in the Marine Resources Act limit the margin of discretion, so that it cannot for example be decided to exterminate a species that is naturally occurring in Norwegian waters, Bakke points out.
- An improvement would be to clarify and specify what environmental principles require from the decision making in the fisheries administration. Take for example, the principle in the Nature Diversity Act § 8, that decisions must be based on scientific knowledge. It can be specified what is required when obtaining, controlling, and reassessing the knowledge base.
Among the basic problems of environmental law is the fact that nature itself does not possess legal agency, i.e., the seas can not sue anyone for overfishing. Some have argued that this problem might be solved by establishing special environmental courts, as is already the case in for example Sweden. Bjørn points out that special courts are not in line with the Norwegian legal tradition. And might even cause its own specific challenges.
- It is difficult to find a satisfactory solution on how the environmental courts and ordinary courts should relate to each other. A single environmental case is often complicated and has ripple effects in many other areas of law and society than just the environmental and environmental law. As well as raising questions that likely require specialized scientific knowledge to answer. These are factors may indicate that court proceedings are not the answer, Bakke reasons.
In Norwegian law, the administrative appeal is a practically important way of trying an administrative decision. According to Bakke the administrative appeal often falls short in environmental matters. But Bakke explains that administrative appeal often falls short in environmental matters. – The fisheries administration is sector-based, and this means that a complaint is usually processed by the superior body in the same sector. If you complain about a decision made by fisheries bureaucrats, your complaint will most likely be processed by fisheries bureaucrats at a higher level, he explains.
- I have toyed with the idea of an environmental ombudsman, who has both the legal expertise, environmental expertise, and the fisheries expertise to supervise the administration of natural resources. As the civil ombudsman, an environmental ombudsman will be able to make statements related to individual decisions, but without having a right of judicial review. This may be a more appropriate way to control the environmental administration than the current scheme or a special environmental court, Bakke points out.
He is writing his dissertation in English and is scheduled to be submitted by the end of this semester. - Since the Norwegian fisheries administration is so well functioning, other countries can probably learn from it. Therefore, it is also an advantage that jurisprudence on Norwegian fisheries management is available to an international audience, Bakke concludes.
We at NCLOS wish him good luck in finishing his thesis and look forward to seeing and hearing more about the result!
Can we make food for a growing global population in a more sustainable way by utilizing marine resources from lowerr trophic levels? Mathilde Morel who is a PhD research fellow at the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea is writing her dissertation on the subject.
Although it may seem so based on the headline, you have not strayed into the websites of the Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics. We have met Mathilde Morel who is a lawyer and PhD research fellow at the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea, where she researches legal issues related to increased use of marine resources from lower trophic levels in the Norwegian aquaculture industry.
With her doctoral project, Mathilde wants to contribute with legal research that can make the aquaculture industry better equipped to handle climate and environmental challenges.
Together with researcher Margherita Paola Poto, she is one of two lawyers associated with the research project Novel Marine Resources for Food Security and Food Safety (SECURE). The project, led by Edel O. Elvevoll, Professor of Industrial Food Sciences, has approximately twenty-five affiliated researchers who are trying to find out how to sustainably utilize new marine resources to feed a growing world population.
Mathilde explains that the term "trophic level" describes the level in a food chain where an organism resides. In any food chain, the lowest trophic level is occupied by the primary producers. In the ocean, these are marine algae and photosynthetic bacteria. The next level consists of those who eat the primary producers, such as small zooplankton and fish larvae, Mathilde explains.
Low-trophic resources have a large and untapped potential, and can be used for both human food, raw materials for animal feed, health products and supplements, biofuels and more. Even though Norway has a long coastal zone and large sea areas, access to marine areas will still be a key challenge in the forthcoming time.
If Norway is to increase the production volume of low-trophic marine species (for example, the farming of seaweed, kelp, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and various forms of mussels) as part of the green shift, it will have to compete for areas with both new activities such as offshore wind, but also with existing activities such as shipping, tourism, mineral extraction on the seabed and fishing. These are challenges that cannot easily be solved without a good framework for ocean management, she explains.
Another challenge is that current regulations are mainly adapted to the traditional aquaculture farming types such as salmon and trout. For example, there are no adapted solutions for multitrophic aquaculture, where different species are cultivated together. The idea is that such facilities can both reduce waste and create added value by allowing waste consumers to be used, for example for animal feed.
Research, technology, and innovation are evolving at a faster pace than regulation. The challenge is to develop a set of rules that at the same time enables both innovation and sustainable growth, but this is, as you probably understand, easier said than done. Therefore, it is important that also jurisprudence is produced in this field, she states.
Mathilde is writing an article-based dissertation and is currently working on her first article, which she is writing together with Andreas Langdal, a PhD research fellow at the Norwegian College of Fishery Science and part of the SECURE project. Together, the two have looked at legal measures to reduce the climate footprint of salmon farming.
Most of the greenhouse gas footprint of salmon farming comes from feed, where in particular the use of soy protein imported from Brazil contributes to the destruction of forest areas to expand the agricultural industry.
Although those engaged in aquaculture are subject to many and detailed requirements, there are few legally binding mechanisms in place that make demands on or hold feed producers accountable, either at international or national level. This is a major challenge when it comes to reducing emissions, she points out.
- We are already in the process of a green shift. As part of this, we must change our diets and the types of feed ingredients used in food production. Low-trophic farming can contribute to the production of more sustainable food, at the same time as relieving the pressure on fish stocks that are currently overfished and may in the long term replace the use of soy as feed, Mathilde states.
- To ensure that such sustainable solutions in the aquaculture industry and society in general can have the best possible growth conditions, it is crucial to have the right management tools and regulatory processes in place, she concludes.
Phillipp Peter Nickels is a PhD Candidate at the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea (NCLOS).
His dissertation will look at the limits and possibilities of international law, including the law of the sea, to mitigate ocean acidification at the intersection of land and sea. Ocean acidification is to a great extent caused by CO2 emissions from land-based sources that enter the atmosphere to eventually be absorbed by seawater.
Ocean acidification thus presents itself as a regulatory challenge at the intersection of land and sea and is one example among others of external impacts on the marine environment, which might call into question the problem-solving capacity of international law, as evidenced by continuing ocean acidification.
Before becoming a PhD Candidate at NCLOS, Nickels did a bachelor’s in political science and public law in Germany and an LL.M in the Law of the Sea at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. After getting his LL.M. he worked for a year as a researcher at NCLOS on various projects.
The vulnerable and sensitive Arctic ecosystems are affected by climate change and by increasing human activities. With rapid changes and uncertainties, there is a need for urgent measures to ensure socio-ecological resilience and good ocean governance. The project therefore investigates the capacity of the existing legal framework in providing for sustainable development of the marine Arctic.
The primary objective of the project is to contribute to good governance of the marine Arctic by critically investigating the implementation of EA in Norway. The subsidiary objective is to propose a set of best practices or recommendations that could be applied to foster the implementation of EA in the Arctic region on a general level.
The project investigates the ecosystem approach (EA) to ocean governance as a key strategy for sustainable development. The project examines how ecosystem approach can be implemented within the legal framework and provide for adaptive, integrated and holistic management without undermining the rule of law and such core values as accountability, participation, legal certainty and predictability.
As the implementation of ecosystem approach hinges on the choices made by individual states, the project predominantly focuses on regulations applicable to and within the Arctic waters under the Norwegian jurisdiction. As the ecosystems of the marine Arctic as well as the effects of human activities are transboundary, the Norwegian law is investigated in the context of global and regional law and policy.
Science is a critical component to EA. The project thus investigates how law and science can be integrated to provide for adaptive governance. Furthermore it examines whether and how EA is implemented into the sectors of fisheries, shipping/tourism, hydrocarbons and new activities. Possible mechanisms for implementing EA, as well as the potential of implementing EA across jurisdictions through cooperation with other states, are also assessed.
For more information about the project visit: Developing good ocean governance of the Arctic in times of unpredictable and rapid changes [DOGA] | UiT
This project is a part of the Changing Arctic research school.
Elise Johansen, Nele Matz-Lück and Øystein Jensen
Alexander Lott
Vito De Lucia, Alex Oude Elferink, and Lan Ngoc Nguyen
International Law and Marine Areas beyond National Jurisdiction, Brill, ISBN: 978-90-04-50635-0
Satya N. Nandan & Kristine E. Dalaker
Reflections on the Making of the Modern Law of the Sea, Ridge Books, ISBN: 9789813251373
Irene Dahl & Øystein Jensen
Svalbardtraktaten 100 år, Fagbokforlaget, ISBN:9788245027884
Elise Johansen, Signe Busch and Ingvild Ulrikke Jakobsen
The Law of the Sea and Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 9781108907118
Nigel Bankes; Stephen Allen; Øyvind Ravna
The Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Marine Areas, Hart Publishing, ISBN: 9781509928644, 2019, p 432.
Vito De Lucia
The 'Ecosystem Approach' in International Environmental Law, Genealogy and Biopolitics, 1st Edition
Routledge, ISBN13: 9781138557260, 2019.
Ingvild Ulrikke Jakobsen; Trude Haugli; Gunnar Ketil Eriksen
Rettsvitenskap under nordlys og midnattssol, Fagbokforlaget, ISBN:978-82-450-2313-8, 2018, pp. 370
Tore Henriksen; Signe Veierud Busch; Alexander Oude Elferink
Maritime Boundary Delimitation: The Case Law. Is It Consistent and Predictable?, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 433
Tore Henriksen; Erik Jaap Molenaar; Kristine Dalaker Kraabel; Robert C. Beckman and J. Ashley Roach
Governance of Arctic Shipping. Balancing Rights and Interests of Arctic States and User States, Publications on Ocean Development (ISSN 0924-1922), vol 84, 2017, Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 448
Ingvild Ulrikke Jakobsen
Marine Protected Areas in International Law - an Arctic perspective. Brill Nijhoff 2016 (ISBN 9789004254725) 435 s.
Irene Vanja Dahl; Nigel Bankes; David L. VanderZwaag eds.
Aquaculture Law and Policy - Global, Regional and National Perspectives. Edward Elgar Publishing 2016 (ISBN 9781784718107) 512 s.
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Magne Frostad
Voldelige hav: Pirateri og jus. Cappelen Damm Akademisk 2016 (ISBN 978-82-02-52842-3) 299 s.
Signe Veierud Busch
Establishing Continental Shelf Limits Beyond 200 Nautical Miles by the Coastal State - A Right of Involvemrnt for Other States. Brill Nijhoff 2016 (ISBN 9789004326231) 451 s.
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Vito De Lucia; Ruth Thomas-Pellicer and Sian Sullivan
Contributions to Law, Philosophy and Ecology. Exploring Re-embodiments, Routledge, ISBN 9781138852877, 2016 pp. 268
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Nigel Bankes; Seline Trevisanut
Energy from the Sea: An International Law Perspective on Ocean Energy. Utrecht: Brill 2015 (ISBN 9789004303515) 181 s.
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Erik Jaap Molenaar; M. Chantal Ribiero (Co-Editors)
Maritime Safety and Environmental Protection in Europe. Multiple Layers in Regulation and Compliance (Gråfica Ediliber:2015) available at www.marsafenet.org
Alexander Oude Elferink; Don Rothwell; K. N. Scott and T. Stephens
The Oxford Handbook of the Law of the Sea, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-871548-1, 2015, pp. 1072
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Øystein Jensen
Noreg og havets folkerett, Adademika forlag, ISBN978-82-321-0393-5
Øystein Jensen
"The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf: Law and Legitimacy", Brill(Nijhoff (Leiden/Boston, 2014), 316 p.
David VanderZwaag
Climate Change and the Shifting International Law and Policy Seascape for Arctic Shipping, R.S.Abate (ed.) Climate Change impacts on Ocean and Coastal Law, U.S. and International Perspectives, (Oxford University Press.)
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Claudia Cinelli; Eva Gomez Vasquez
Regional strategies to maritime security: A Comparative Perspective, published by Tirant Lo Blanch Valencia, 2014. pp. 312
Alexander Oude Elferink
The Delimitation of the Continental Shelf between Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands; Arguing Law, Practicing Politics? Cambridge University Press 2013 (ISBN 978-1-107-04146-2)
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Erik Jaap Molenaar; Alexander Oude Elferink; Don Rothwell
The Law of the Sea and the Polar Regions: Interactions between Global and Regional Regimes. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 2013 (ISBN 978-90-04-25520-3)
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Nigel Bankes; Timo Koivurova
The Proposed Nordic Saami Convention National and International Dimensions of Indigenous Property Rights. Hart Publishing Ltd 2013 (ISBN 9781849462723) 436 p.
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The K.G. Jebsen Centre for the Law of the Sea (JCLOS) was established on 1 September 2013. The Centre was funded by the K. G. Jebsen Foundation and UiT the Arctic University of Norway. The funding period for JCLOS ended 31 August 2019.
