This spring The Economist wrote about the extension of maritime claims to continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from land. Huge areas of ocean are being claimed, with rights to oil, metal, and seabed methane hydrates.
While some issues are being worked out amicably, the move could intensify other disputes, such as those around the multiple claims to the South China Sea.
This could also make more important a concept noted by Professor James Lee earlier this year: will islands that cease to exist due to global warming still have sovereignty based on their former existence?
He wrote:
Some remote islands — particularly such Pacific islands as Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tonga, the Maldives and many others — may be partially or entirely submerged beneath rising ocean waters. Do they lose their sovereignty if their territory disappears? After all, governments in exile have maintained sovereign rights in the past over land they didn’t control (think of France and Poland in World War II). Nor are these new questions far away in the future. The first democratically elected president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, is already planning to use tourism revenue to buy land abroad — perhaps in India, Sri Lanka or Australia — to house his citizens.
Absolute sovereignty, territorial waters, and marine exclusive economic zones are all ultimately based on land in current international law. Will a strip of the northern Indian Ocean remain Maldivian even if the islands begin to vanish? Will the Maldivians and others fund their displaced lives with the mineral rights to the waters that swallow their homes?
(Image courtesy Rappensuncle — Creative Commons use via Flickr)
The Washington Post yesterday reported on another example of sub-national governmental action on climate change (seen also at the state/province level).
Some 522 mayors representing 65 million Americans have signed a climate change agreement in the face of federal foot-dragging on the issue.
One driver: a third of Americans in an April poll now say that climate change is the world’s most serious environmental problem, double the number from 2006, the Post reports.
City-level action is particularly striking given that climate change is a global issue, beyond the reach of even national governments to manage on their own.
A Washington Post piece notes some issues arising at the increasingly blurry boundary between virtual worlds and the real one:
- Police are looking into whether virtual crimes — such as simulated rape — may also be real.
- Some activities, such as simulated sex involving only real adults, may be legal in some countries by illegal in others, but virtual worlds transcend such boundaries.
- Real governments are making appearances in virtual spaces: both Sweden and Maldives have opened embassies in Second Life.
But virtual worlds may also diverge and separate from the real world:
Philip Rosedale, the founder and chief executive of Linden Labs, said in an interview that Second Life activities should be governed by real-life laws for the time being. … Rosedale said he hopes participants in Second Life eventually develop their own virtual legal code and justice system. “In the ideal case, the people who are in Second Life should think of themselves as citizens of this new place and not citizens of their countries,” he said.
Politics continues to spread to virtual spaces. The Washington Post reported last week on happenings in Second Life, including campaign activities by American and French politicians.
An unusual confrontation erupted after French right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen opened an office in Second Life. Protesters teleported onto the scene, and a melee broke out:
Le Pen security forces responded with push guns, whimsical digital weapons that tossed bodies through the air “like rag dolls,” according to one witness. Protesters fought back with pig grenades, firing fat pink porkers that exploded in neon pink splatters. When the shooting ended, Le Pen’s headquarters lay in ruins, deserted by staff and guards.
This is another indicator of several likely developments:
- More politics of all kinds will appear in virtual worlds.
- More international and global issues will be played out in such spaces.
- With millions of people living, playing, and working in virtual lands, they will create their own politics, and virtual political issues could take on real-world significance.
- This could reach the level of international diplomatic significance. Thousands of interactions could open new kinds of communications between peoples. But they could also create new tensions, over new issues. Last year Koreans massacred Chinese players in the game Lineage, as they felt the Chinese were logging onto Korean servers due to the higher levels of wealth to be had there.
The WP reported today that the leaders of California (an American state) and British Columbia (a Canadian province) are discussing cooperation in alternative energy and climate change initiatives, with BC talking about pursuing ambitious green goals.
This is interesting from a couple of angles:
- It is an example of regions having more in common across borders than within them — evocative of the “Nine Nations of North America” concept.
- It reinforces the concept that the US and now perhaps Canada will be led forward on certain environmental issues by sub-national units. As the premier of BC put it, “If you wait for a whole continent to come along together, sometimes it takes too long.”