Islands Want
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
A Share In
Ocean's Wealth
By a staff writer
With their fingers crossed, as their demands might seem to be far reaching, delegates from the Island territories voiced their desires for a place in the ocean during the Law of the Sea conference at Caracas in Venezuela in July.
Acting as unofficial spokesman for the Islands, Fiji, through its Minister without Portfolio Ratu David Toga nivalu, told the 149-nation assembly that a solution to the problems posed by the archipelagic states was long overdue.
Ratu David said the archipelagic states sought to establish in conven tional form what was always re garded as theirs by tradition.
“We seek”, he said, “to establish the essential political unity of the various components of our oceanic nation and to preserve our inherent right over the resources within the waters that surround our island group and give it the character of a single entity.
“It is proposed that this unity can best be established by drawing archi pelagic baselines around the outer extremity of low water mark of all of the islands and reefs of an archi pelagic state which are intrinsically linked one to the other geographic ally, politically and economically as a unit”.
There are indications that the majority of the major powers are sympathetic to the Islands’ views up to a point, but want to ensure that all nations have free passage of their ships through archipelagic waters.
The wealth on the ocean bed may be the main snag. The existence of vast quantities of minerals such as manganese nodules, which litter the ocean floor like large pebbles on the beaches, is arousing the cupidity of the big powers, especially now that methods of mining even to great depths are being perfected. It can hardly be expected that the big powers will hand this wealth over to countries like the Cooks which is sitting on top of a massive field of manganese nodules.
And powers like Russia and Japan, who sail the seven seas in search of fish, are sure to oppose the erection of liquid boundaries enclosing mil lions of square miles of ocean with a few islands scattered around exer cising sovereignty over the whole.