Breakfast Briefing with Yoshifumi Tanaka
Sea-Level Rise, Statehood, and Baselines
Abstract
Sea-level rise is critical to the continuation of the state itself. In this sense, it can be a direct threat to both national security and human security. Thus, this breakfast briefing addresses the legal implications of sea-level rise for statehood in international law. Furthermore, it examines the legal impact of sea-level rise on baselines under the law of the sea. This issue is of critical importance because it affects the scope of maritime jurisdiction of coastal states. By examining the previous two issues, this briefing considers the question of whether international law has resilience to address new circumstances arising from sea-level rise, which can significantly influence national security as well as human security.
About the Speaker
Yoshifumi Tanaka is Professor of International Law with specific focus on the law of the sea, at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He holds a DES and a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva (currently the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva) and an LLM from Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. He has authored six books, i.e. Predictability and Flexibility in the Law of Maritime Delimitation (Hart Publishing 2006; 2nd edn 2019), A Dual Approach to Ocean Governance: The Cases of Zonal and Integrated Management in International Law of the Sea (Ashgate 2008), The International Law of the Sea (1st edition, Cambridge University Press 2012; 4th edn 2023), The Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes (Cambridge University Press 2018; 2nd edn forthcoming), The South China Sea Arbitration: Toward an International Legal Order in the Oceans (Hart Publishing, 2019), and Polar Law: Introduction (Edward Elgar, forthcoming). He is a co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Polar Law (Routledge 2023) (with Rachael Johnstone and Vibe Ulfbeck).
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See a list of all the Breakfast Briefings for Fall 2025.