The Exclusive Economic Zone

In one line

The exclusive economic zone is a two-hundred-mile belt in which the coastal State owns the resources and everybody else keeps their freedom to sail, fly and lay cables.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the exclusive economic zone is an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, subject to a specific legal regime under which the coastal State has sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the seabed and its subsoil, and jurisdiction over artificial islands, marine scientific research and the protection of the marine environment. It shall not extend beyond two hundred nautical miles from the baselines, and all States retain the freedoms of navigation, overflight and the laying of submarine cables and pipelines.

The newest zone, and the reason for it

The exclusive economic zone did not exist before the 1970s. It was invented at UNCLOS III and accepted as customary law before the Convention even entered into force, which makes it the standard modern example of a treaty rule generating custom, dealt with in [Treaties as a Source].

The pressure came from two directions. Distant-water fleets with industrial technology were exhausting fisheries off other States' coasts, and the coastal States could do nothing beyond twelve miles. And newly independent States wanted the resources off their own shores rather than the freedom of the seas that had served the maritime powers.

The compromise is in the name. It is exclusive as to the economy and it is not exclusive as to anything else. That single sentence answers most examination problems on the topic.

The regime

Article 55. The exclusive economic zone is an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, subject to the specific legal regime established in Part V, under which the rights and jurisdiction of the coastal State and the rights and freedoms of other States are governed by the relevant provisions of the Convention.

The words "specific legal regime" matter. The zone is neither territorial sea nor high seas; it is its own thing, and arguments that treat it as one or the other go wrong.

Article 57. The zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.

Article 56(1). In the exclusive economic zone the coastal State has:

(a) sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living, of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the seabed and its subsoil, and with regard to other activities for the economic exploitation and exploration of the zone, such as the production of energy from the water, currents and winds;