Britain takes Falkland’s seabed dispute to UN

On Monday the United Kingdom placed a claim on the area around the Falkland Islands with the United Nations, in an effort to secure the oil, gas, and mineral reserves of the seabed area.

This is expected to spur a fight with Argentina, which feels the area belongs to its government, specifically the area around the Falkland Islands, the South Sandwich Islands, and South Georgia which is approximately 1.2 million sq km according to the National Oceanography Centre.

Argentina has also issued a claim to the UN for the tract of seabed.

The UK Government claims it owns the land, without a doubt, and has written the claim details in a 63 page document that can be accessed soon on the official UN website.

This precisely defines the area the UK hopes to secure with UN approval.

The UN rules of convention allow states to seek control of ocean bed areas that are past the 200 mile nautical limit through 350 miles of nautical areas offshore.

However, the distance can get complicated when countries start to measure the slope of the ocean and the depth of the ocean in order to get the exact figures, which can delay a claim.

Many of the results of these claims heard by the UN are actually age old boundary line debates that extend into which country has the right to the precious minerals, gas, and oil reserves.

Currently, France and Canada are also fighting over seabed areas as well.

Although many environmental groups such as Greenpeace deny the process of seabed claims for minerals as strategic colonial land disputes, there is heavy weight on a country to claim land before it is exploited by another country and many states across the globe have seabed claims disputed at the UN convention.

Britain is also involved in a seabed claim regarding the Bay of Biscay, for a 31,000 sq mile part of the ocean floor, in a shared submission with France, Spain, and Ireland.