Hi, am I tripping or does Greenland still only claim 3nm territorial seas? In OSM it is mapped as 12nm, but I haven’t found any claims online that it is 12nm. On the contrary it seems Greenland still only claims 3nm.
in this context it may be noted that the Kingdom of Denmark currently only claims 3 nm as Greenlandic territorial waters and not 12 nm as permitted under UNCLOS art. 3, as claimed for the other parts of the Danish realm. https://www.sjorettsfondet.no/journal/2020/535/m-1029
I believe they claim ~7 nm along the Kennedy Strait/Canadian border (the first computer-generated international border and the cause of the Hans Island dispute).
Apparently that dispute is more about the island and the EEZ than the territorial waters, unless you have other sources?
Based on the 2022 Agreement, Tartupaluk, which lies within Canada’s territorial sea and Greenland’s EEZ (given that the territorial sea in Greenland is so far limited to 3 nm) will thus be divided along a natural ridge with about 60% of the area being allocated to Greenland (Kingdom of Denmark) and the remainder of the area. The Legal Implications of the 2022 Canada-Denmark/Greenland Agreement on Hans Island (Tartupaluk) for the Inuit Peoples of Greenland and Nunavut | The Arctic Institute – Center for Circumpolar Security Studies
The island or the EEZ wasn’t the salient part of the dispute for this conversation in my mind, it’s the distance the border is from the tideline.
Well, I’m not going to change it in OSM, I just noticed this error when mapping in OpenHistoricalMap. But if anyone wants to dive deeper into the topic and modify those boundaries in OSM, be my guest.
Apparently there are a lot of incorrect maritime boundaries. Here is a list of territorial limits. Togo should be 30nm, Montserrat, Pitcairn and Jordan should be 3nm. I have checked this with other sources than only that list, such as this source.
Apparently there are a lot of incorrect maritime boundaries. Here is a list of territorial limits. Togo should be 30nm, Montserrat, Pitcairn and Jordan should be 3nm. I have checked this with other sources than only that list, such as this source.
afaik these are the claims but to be „valid“ other countries must recognize them
That’s certainly how international borders work on land. To be sure, where maritime claims touch, such as between Peru and its neighbors, there have been international court rulings specifically about those parts of the boundary, which we simply follow. On the other hand, most of these unusual maritime claims don’t touch other countries’ maritime claims. If there’s any dispute, it’s a dispute with another country’s assertion of freedom of navigation. So if a country claims less than what’s allowed by international treaty, there’s no reason to give the country more than what it claims, right?
That is what I was thinking. If a country only claims 7nm, how come they get the 12nm that the international community says they should have. Also countries can’t recognize a 12nm claim if such a claim never existed in the first place.
Side information, but important information: the limit starts from the baseline, and the baseline can be close to 100 MN from the shore. So 7 nm somewhere can be closer to the shore than 3 nm elsewhere.
Example for Brittany:
official land-sea limit (using HAT):
Coastline according OSM (using MHWS):
Baseline (0 NM):
As you see, 0 NM can be far from shore.
For the same country (France), the baseline for the Clipperton Island is the LAT, so close to shore.
Apparently that dispute is more about the island and the EEZ than the territorial waters
Both are based on the baseline, so depending on how it’s formulated, a conflict on one limit can and usually will trigger an issue on the other as the baseline is usually the origin of the conflict/claim.
