Kenya joins scramble for ocean floor as rest of Africa sleeps

Story by PETER MWAURA | FAIR PLAY
Publication Date: 6/28/2008

The scramble for the ocean floor is officially on. It is the second and last act of global colonisation since the 1884 Berlin Conference in which European powers carved up Africa for themselves.

When the scramble is over, there will be nothing left to grab. Oceans are the last frontier.

Coastal states have up to May 13, 2009, to stake their claims, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. After the deadline, the International Sea-Bed Authority, an organisation set up under the convention, will take up whatever ocean space the states cannot claim.

The Authority will administer the area as the "common heritage of mankind". Of the 39 coastal African states, only 33 have ratified the convention.

To date the Seychelles, the Comoros, Eritrea, Libya, Liberia and Algeria have not ratified it.

Of the 33 African countries, only Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria are actively preparing to stake their claims in time.

Ocean states

After the deadline, they will lose the opportunity to become what fisheries management expert Johnson Kariuki describes as "ocean states", as opposed to merely being coastal states.

Mr Kariuki, one of the three joint secretaries of Kenya's task force set up last year to delineate and claim our ocean space, says the team has already completed surveys and is analysing the data to meet the deadline.

While it is understandable that many African coastal states may not have equipment such as survey boats and experts such as hydrographers and geoscientists, sleeping on their rights spells doom for their future.

Oceans are important because of their resources, both living and mineral, as well as for shipping and environmental conservation, to mention only a few of the benefits. It is important for coastal states to be able to sustainably control, conserve, manage and utilise their ocean space and resources.

The scramble for the seabed and ocean floor was dramatically brought to the fore on August 2, 2007, when Russian submarines dived deep into the Arctic Ocean and planted a corrosion-resistant metallic national flag on the ocean floor as a symbol of Moscow's claim over the Arctic floor, believed to be rich in oil, natural gas and other mineral deposits.

The Russian claim has been contested by Canada, the US, Norway and Denmark, which are also competing for the space.

The Russian-type scramble can spread to other oceans and seas, although Mr Kariuki says our ocean space is safe from such counter-claims.

What makes the scramble hot is the fact that science has discovered that the sea-bed, once considered useless, is a goldmine.

Besides fish, the ocean floor and subsoil contain mineral deposits including gas, oil, cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese nodules.

Countries that do not meet the deadline will extinguish their rights to anything outside their 12-nautical-mile territorial waters and a 200-nautical-mile "exclusive economic zone" — areas that are automatically allowed by the law.

The law also allows a state to exercise control over the zone contiguous to its territorial waters to prevent the infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations.

What the coastal states must claim is the continental shelf beyond the "exclusive economic zone", which automatically belongs to a state, and no proof of claim is required.

The law defines the continental shelf as "the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea."

It is the natural underwater extension of the land up to the point where it either gradually descends or drops off into the ocean floor.

A continental shelf that goes beyond 200 nautical miles is called the outer limits or the extended continental shelf.

Extended shelf

States may claim an extended shelf, but it should not exceed 350 nautical miles, or 648km, which is equivalent to twice the distance between Nairobi and Entebbe as the crow flies.

To prove that the continental shelf extends beyond 200 nautical miles, a state must conduct hydrographic and geoscientific studies and submit the data to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the organisation that approves the claims.

The Kenyan task force is also required to come up "with policies and strategies" that can position the country "to optimally benefit from her ocean space".

It has made two public appeals to the public to submit their views, but in vain.

The public has not been particularly interested in such an esoteric subject. I guess it  is not as exciting as the work of the commission of inquiry into post-election violence or the independent review commission investigating the alleged irregularities in last year's General Election.




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