Dear Ralph,
Your questions are excellent and I wrote the following paper, from an island perspective, to raise some of those too:
Kelman, I. 2006. "Island Security and Disaster Diplomacy in the Context of Climate Change". Les Cahiers de la Sécurité, vol. 63, pp. 61-94.
(Downloadable in English and French from http://www.disasterdiplomacy.org/publications.html#kelman2006b )
But the paper really is about raising the questions, not answering them. The other major limitation of the paper is that it is from the perspective of environmental and societal change on islands, rather than accounting for legal, political science, and boundary studies literature and contributions. Therefore, I would certainly be interested from others' perspectives to better understand the possible answers to the questions mentioned by Ralph and in the paper--or even just to understand how to investigate answering these questions from beyond my main areas of research.
From an island perspective, Tuvalu and the Maldives have received the most publicity on these issues, but now Kiribati is, quite rightly, garnering their own attention http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gz6ciKOYfQF_SCTga6GyPnvW-IRg
Ilan
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Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 15:49:54 +0100
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Disappearing islands and their EEZ
To: [log in to unmask]
Some musings for the inevitable future of displaced Island Nations and
shrinking land masses.
As an example the two small uninhabited Kiribati
islets, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999. Only the
beginning of an ongoing situation.
Question: With rising sea levels and saline contamination of crops and
drinking water making habitable islands uninhabitable, what happens to the EEZs
of Island Nations who are displaced because of islands becoming submerged or
uninhabitable?
Would these nations still retain their original EEZ areas for fishing
and mineral rights or do these zones revert to international waters as each
island becomes submerged?
In the event that the entire land area becomes submerged, would the
sovereign rights be held in stasis over a number of generations and offered
back to descendants of the original inhabitants when/if they re-emerge, or
would this become ‘up for grabs’ as new land?
What about the cases of disappearing coastlines as in Bangladesh where
islands are eroding away in the Ganges Delta or the disappearance of large
parts of the extended arm and wetlands of the Mississippi Delta after the
destruction by Hurricane Katrina.
Will this eventually affect straight baselines and thus territorial
waters and EEZs where coastal islands become submerged or an anchor point
like a cape, peninsula or point breaks off or becomes submerged?
Ah! The joys of a changing planet.
Ralph Aytoun
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