Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
NIGERIA’S EXCLUSIVE ECONOMIC ZONE
Dr. B. Obinna Okere
Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Nigeria.
That “law is a superstructure upon an economic base” is a truism popularised by Karl Marx.1 The relevance of this adage to the maritime domain has long been recognised by leading text writers.2 The primacy of economic over purely political, strategic and navigational factors in the regulation of the international law of the sea, and especially the dominating influence of the exploitation of the resources of the sea as the gateway to the solution of intractable conflicts over delimitation of international maritime belts, have been vindicated by the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (hereinafter referred to as UNCLOS III).
Evolution of the concept of Exclusive Economic Zone 3
The importance of maritime resources, especially as the economic mainstay of many coastal States, had earlier been given due recognition by the Second United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, especially by the Geneva Convention of Apr. 29, 1958, on the Continental Shelf. This Convention did no more than codify evolving customary law on the subject, based on generalised State practice whose first major impetus derived from the “Truman Proclamation” of Sept. 28, 1945.4 The Geneva Convention went a step further, in defining, albeit imprecisely, this notion of the continental shelf. According to art. 1 of the Convention,
“the term continental shelf is used as referring—
- (a) to the sea-bed and sub-soil of the marine areas adjacent to the coast but outside the area of the territorial sea to a depth of 200 metres or beyond that limit, to where the depth of the superjacent waters admits of the exploitation of the natural resources of the said areas;
- (b) to the sea-bed and sub-soil of similar submarine areas adjacent to the coast of islands”.
This definition lays down double criteria for the recognition of a continental shelf. The first depends strictly on the geographical configuration or contour of the coast; the second is determined by exploitability.
While strict adherence to the first criterion deprived some riverrine States with
1 Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy transl. N. 1 Stone (Chicago, 1904) p. 11.
2 Gidel, Le droit international public de la mer, Paris, 1932 tome I Colmbos, International Law of the Sea, Longman, London 5th edn., 1962 Chap. I. Ferron, Le droit international de la mer, Geneva, 1958, Vol. I, Chap. I.
3 See Phillips, J. C., “The Exclusive Economic Zone as a Concept in International Law”, vol. 26 (1977) ICLQ, p. 586; Nawaz, M. K., “The Emergence of Exclusive Economic Zone: Implications for a New Law of the Sea”, No. 4 Indian Journal of International Law, (1976) pp. 471–488; Hollick, A. L., “The Origins of 200-mile off-shore Zone”, A.J.I.L. vol. 71, No. 3 (1977) pp. 494–500.
4 Presidential Proclamation No. 2667 on the “Policy of the United States with respect to the Natural Resources of the Subsoil and Sea-Bed of the Continental Shelf”.
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