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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?

Marovo-lagunen på Salomonøyene
Marovo-lagunen at the Solomon islands, has one of the richest coral reefs in the world. Anthropologist Edvard Hviding, is leading the Toppforsk-grant project Mare Nullius, and has for longer periods of time been doing his fieldwork at Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands, New Caledonia and Hawai’i. He has also studied climat diplomacy at the countries in the pacific ocean when it comes to local and global areanas.
Photo:
Edvard Hviding, UiB

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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)