Coastal nations have quietly taken over areas of seabed totalling almost the size of Australia since 2002 and far more is up for grabs in one of the biggest redrawings of the world map in history, Reuters quoted experts as saying. A year after a May 13, 2009, deadline for states to outline the outer limit of their continental shelves, a U.N. commission is struggling with a vast backlog of claims to regions such as the Arctic that may contain oil or minerals. "It's going on quietly...but we must speed up the work," said Harald Brekke, a vice chairman of the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf which is overseeing what is meant to be the final fixing of maritime boundaries. "In the worst case it could be 20-30 years which is not acceptable," he said on Wednesday of the current pace by the part-time commission. Under existing laws, coastal states control a zone 200 nautical miles (370 km) off their coasts. The new round will fix rights to exploit the seabed in places wherea continental shelf, usually of shallow waters, extends further offshore. The size of the shifts is comparable to momentous changes to the world map after the end of European colonial rule, said Joan Fabres, head of the U.N. Environment Programme's Shelf Programme based at the GRID-Arendal foundation in Norway. -- SPA
