do not extend to the water column or the airspace above. The Meeting of States Parties to the Convention decided that for those States for which the Convention entered into force before 13 May 1999, a submission should be made within ten years of this date4. This means that for a large number of coastal States looking to delineate the extended continental shelf, the ten-year time period expired on 12 May 2009. For all other States a submission is to be made as soon as possible, but in any case within ten years of the entry into force of the Convention for that State4.
The process of delineation of the outer limits of the con- tinental shelf leads to the establishment of a boundary between areas under national jurisdiction and the Area. Therefore, this process is not only important for the coastal States but also for the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the institution established by the Convention that manages the Area and administers the exploration and exploitation of its resources. The goal of this regime is to ensure that the activities carried out in the Area will benefit human-kind as a whole, taking into account the interests of developing States in particular.
Maritime zones are defined by breadth criteria measured from a baseline, which runs along the coast. In the case of the continental shelf, however, the Convention resorts to both breadth criteria and the concept of a continental margin. The outer limits of the continental shelf could in fact be marked by the 200 M line if there is no extended continental shelf. In addition, the Convention establishes that the continental shelf cannot extend beyond constraint lines set at 350 M from the baseline or 100 M from the 2500 m isobath. For cases in which the margin does not extend
beyond these limits, the Convention relies on the concept of a continental margin, which is identified through an anal- ysis of the depth and shape of the seafloor, as well as the thickness of the underlying sediments.
The continental margin comprises the submerged prolon- gation of the land mass of a coastal State2. It consists of the seabed and subsoil of the shelf, the slope and the rise, but does not include the deep ocean floor with its oceanic ridges. This definition is based on scientific concepts. It is therefore, necessary to underline that there is a difference between the “continental shelf” from a scientific and a le- gal point of view.
From a scientific viewpoint, the “continental shelf” is one of the components that, together with the continental slope and the continental rise, constitute the continental margin.
From a legal point of view, the “continental shelf comprises the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea throughout the natural prolonga- tion of its land territory to the outer edge of the continen- tal margin, or to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured where the outer edge of the continental margin does not extend up to that distance2.
So, if the continental margin is narrower than 200 M, the “legal” continental shelf can extend to up to 200 M, and need not to be defined by geo-scientific data; if the conti- nental margin is wider than 200 M, the “legal” continental shelf can extend to the outer edge of the continental mar- gin, but not beyond the above-mentioned constraint lines.
The Last Maritime Zone 9
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