Maritime sovereignty and territorialisation: Comparing the Pacific Islands and South China Sea

How do coastal states claim and preserve 'maritime sovereignty'? This article analyses two contentious issues arising from gaps in the UNCLOS regime. The first is the tension between different perspectives of the relationship between 'land' and 'sea'. The second is the reliance on 'ambulatory' rather than 'fixed' baselines to calculate maritime zones, which leaves low-lying states vulnerable to rising sea levels and changing coastlines. This article compares China and Pacific Islands states' efforts to make legal arguments, map, and narrate their sovereignty over maritime areas to support their maritime sovereignty claims. It finds that both China and Pacific Island states are seeking to transcend the conventional land/sea divide and shape the way in which UNCLOS recognises maritime sovereignty entitlements by engaging in 'maritime territorialisation', that is, by analogising the oceans as territory and performing sovereignty over the sea as they would land.