Protecting New Zealand's ocean estate: Peter Cozens calls for New Zealand to exert leadership in establishing a comprehensive oceans policy that properly reflects its maritime destiny.

• Author: Cozens, Peter

An nescis mi amici, quantilla prudentia oceanus, regetur? (Don't you know my friends with how little wisdom the Ocean is governed?) The Polynesian people who arrived in the archipelago of Aotearoa New Zealand circa 1250 AD must have expressed significant relief after their intrepid and dangerous voyages from Hawaiki. Similar expressions of delight may also have emanated from the many shiploads of settlers who came from Great Britain and Europe in the 19th century too. Here was a land of munificent opportunity and plentiful resources and, therefore, little need to venture far across the hazardous sea and over the horizon--why worry about the sea when there was so much potential for wealth generation and comfort from the land? In any case, with Britannia and latterly the navy of the United States 'ruling the waves', there was little appetite to worry about matters of maritime security and trade. That may be one explanation for New Zealand's apparent lack of interest until relatively recently in reflecting more deeply about the nation's maritime estate, which now includes the subjects of dynamic change in regional maritime geography, significant international responsibilities and the need for the development of overdue policy and strategy. The purpose of this article is to reflect about some of the contemporary challenges associated with New Zealand's maritime circumstances but with a view to shaping future policy settings, especially those that apply to and temper this nation's foreign relations and policy, with emphasis on the South Pacific.

For the newly created United Nations after the Second World War one of its important tasks was to codify under the new International Law Commission a new universal law of the sea. (1) The most important of a series of three consultations is the UN Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS III), negotiated between 1972 and 1981. It was to meet the intentions of this agreement that the New Zealand Parliament passed the Territorial Sea, Contiguous Zone and Exclusive Economic Zone Act 1977 on 26 September 1977. (2) Although the Act came into force on 1 April 1978, it would not be until 19 July 1996 that New Zealand ratified UNCLOS III (now usually termed 'The Law of the Sea Convention' or LOSC for short). In 2008, in response to a claim by the New Zealand government, the UN Commission for the Limits of the Continental Shelf agreed to introduce an extended continental shelf.

Most New Zealanders are aware of the nation's large maritime estate, though not necessarily of how it is composed. Essentially, there are three distinct zones. The first is a twelve-mile territorial sea. This zone used to be three miles, somewhat loosely described as being the range of a cannon shot (3)--in other words, the area of control that could be exercised by force from the shore. Its importance is that from the perspective of jurisdiction that area is treated as if it is terra firma and subject to the same laws pertaining on land.

The second area is the exclusive economic zone, which is measured from a point on the shore at 'mean low water springs' (MLWS), that is, that place on the shoreline where the tide recedes the furthest, and stretches in a perpendicular 200 nautical miles to the seaward. Within that zone, the coastal state may enjoy exclusive economic sovereign rights to everything in the water column, on the seafloor and beneath it. The water column is described as the total amount of water measured from the surface to the seafloor within the limits of the point at MLWS and the boundary of the 200 miles from it.

The third area is known as the claimable continental shelf. This zone is measured up to a further 150 nautical miles perpendicular from the limit of the 200-mile zone or however far the shelf may project within that 150 miles. The maritime estate of New Zealand is said to be one of the largest in the world, comprising more than 4 million square kilometres. The specific delimitations of nautical boundaries are complex--precise definitions and other data can be accessed from Land Information New Zealand.

There are some surprising contributors to the articulation of the law of the sea. For example, the president of the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, Ambassador Tommy Koh of Singapore, in his foreword to Reflections on the Making of the Modern Law of the Sea, by Ambassador Satya N. Nandan of Fiji and his colleague Kristine Dalaker, (4) pointed to the extraordinary situation that Nandan, from a country as small as Fiji, could make such an outsize contribution to the success of the 1972-81 negotiations to reach a consensus among almost all members of the United Nations, an effort that Fiji recognised by awarding him its highest honour. Koh acknowledged that:

UNCLOS is one of the important treaties which the United Nations has given birth to. It is nothing less than the constitution of the world's oceans. It is a revolutionary treaty and not a codification treaty. It was one of the first treaties in which developing countries fully participated in the post-colonial period. It has made an invaluable contribution to peace at sea and peace in the world. (5) Rules-based foundation

Some might argue that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provides a rules-based foundation on...