Mare Nullius: Millions to study maritime law.
In the pacific ocean there are entire states in danger of being swalloved by the ocean. These small islands, marked as green and brown dots on the map, are now dissappearing. What will happen to the people who inhabit these islands, and what will happen to the maritime law?
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Ernst Nordtveit will be contributing in to the Mare Nullius project which has received grants from the Toppforsk funds. The project is run by Social Anthropologist Edvard Hvidding who received the grants in early 2018.
Professor Ernst Nordtveit of UiB’s Faculty of Law is one of Hviding’s internal institutional partners in the project, and the sentral question he is asking is: “... what happens with the EEZs of the island states and the boundaries of their continental shelves when islands become uninhabitable and ultimately inundated by the ocean. Will they be able to retain their exclusive rights to the vast tuna resources which provide them with today’s financial foundation, or will the EEZs turn into open ocean free to unlimited fishing”
Read more about Nordtvedts role in the project in this interview (in norwegian)
About the project
- The project’s full title: Mare Nullius? Sea-level Rise and Maritime Sovereignties in the Pacific – An Expanded Anthropology of Climate Change.
- Five-year research project funded by the Research Council of Norway’s Toppforsk programme.
- Principal investigator and project director is Professor Edvard Hviding.
- Interdisciplinary project that draws on social anthropology, climate science, law of the sea and sovereignty, political science, global history, etc.
- Leading scholars from three of the University of Bergen’s faculties are involved. In addition to Hviding as PI, Professor Ernst Nordtveit from the Faculty of Law and Professor Noel Keenlyside from the Geophysical Institute are central participants.
