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Welcome to Scotland!
But wait, where's the Irn-Bru, the kilts, the Greggs, the vegan sausage rolls, the deep
fried Mars bars, the beautiful vistas, the cone hats, the drunkards, the loud American
tourists, the five annual days of sun, the sticky nightclub floors, the endless seagulls--oh
wait, here are the seagulls.
This must really be Scotland.
You see, the reason this is Scotland is because of the UK's never ending quest to claim tiny,
terrible rocks in the middle of the ocean.
Now, this rock, called Rockall, is further away from Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital,
than Edinburgh is from London, the UK’s capital.
In fact, Rockall is closer to Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, than it is to
Edinburgh.
It’s nowhere near Scotland, so why does the UK so desperately want it to be part of
their country?
Money.
Now, the UK has plenty of tiny, terrible islands off the coast of Scotland like Sula Sgeir,
St Kilda, the Flannan Isles, and more.
Almost universally, Scotland’s tiny, terrible islands are uninhabited aside from a few temporary
military and conservation personnel.
Now, the UK had good motivation for annexing Rockall, the most isolated of the tiny, terrible
islands, back in the 50’s.
In the many centuries of flip flop between liking and disliking whatever country currently
existed here, this was a period when the UK didn’t like them—the Soviets.
The UK had a missile testing range here, in the Outer Hebrides, and they didn’t want
the Soviets setting up on Rockall and spying on them which they could possibly legally
do since Rockall wasn’t definitively claimed by anyone.
Because of that, the immortal Queen Elizabeth ordered the Royal Navy to sail out to Rockall,
plant a flag, place a plaque, and claim it which they officially did at 10:16 AM on September
18, 1955 marking the last ever expansion of the British Empire.
Now, here’s the thing.
Nobody really currently actively disputes that the rock is British.
They got to it first, they claimed it, it’s theirs.
This water, on the other hand, is some controversial water.
You see, back in 1982, after 14 years of negotiations, a bunch of selfless world leaders gathered
in Montego Bay, Jamaica to plot their signatures down on this—the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea.
This is one of the most consequential UN treaties to have ever been signed because it effectively
decided, definitively, how this whole area, the 71% of the world that is ocean, works
politically.
This treaty has been signed by almost every nation in the world.
Now, just take a moment to guess what single large, developed nation decided they were
special enough to not participate in this treaty?
Yeah, it’s the US.
While the US effectively follows most of the rules of this treaty, it has not signed it
since, according to arguments against, it would subject the US to dumb things like,
“environmental standards” and “sharing.”
One big part of the treaty, though, was the establishment of the concept of, “exclusive
economic zones.”
Typically, the zone within 200 nautical miles, 230 miles, 370 kilometers, or 3.9125 x 10-11
light years of a country’s coast is a country’s EEZ.
This area is not part of a country, they don’t have sovereignty over it, but they do have
exclusive rights to all natural resources, including fish and oil, within it.
The UK, with its proclivity for claiming tiny, terrible islands has a pretty large and geographically
varied EEZ in the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans.
Rockall, here, could hypothetically have an exclusive economic zone of this but of course
there’s the Republic of Ireland here and the Faroe Islands, which are an autonomous
country of Denmark, here.
While it’s determined on a case-by-case basis, how it normally works when two country’s
EEZ’s overlap is each point just goes to the nearest country so that puts Rockall’s
EEZ as this and so in 1977 that’s what the United Kingdom claimed.
Buuuuut, if we go to part 8, article 121 of the treaty, we can find their definition of
what an island is as, “a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is
above water at high tide,” and that an island isn’t a rock, “which cannot sustain human
habitation or economic life of their own,” and artificial islands don’t count (cough,
China.)
Fashionably late, The United Kingdom signed this treaty in 1997.
Rockall, surprisingly given it literally has, “rock” in its name, has no flat land,
no vegetation, it’d be impossible for anyone to live there permanently without support
from shore.
Therefore, after years of asserting that Rockall was, in fact, an island and therefore that
their EEZ was this, the United Kingdom voluntarily reclassified it as a rock as therefore reset
their EEZ as this.
It’s fine though.
The UK are experts at losing territory.
Nowadays, the quest for this area of ocean goes on.
According to the same treaty, countries are allowed to submit claims for their EEZ’s
to extend further than 200 nautical miles if the continental shelf extends further based
off a whole host of insanely complicated definitions and qualifications so in 2009 the UK submitted
this document outlining how they believed they fulfilled these insanely complicated
definitions and qualifications.
To this Iceland and Denmark submitted documents to the UN that said, in the most formal and
cordial way possible, “bugger off mate” and, “you’re wrong.”
As of now, the area between the Irish, British, Danish, and Icelandic EEZ’s is nobody’s
as it shall remain for some uncertain amount of time.
Losing almost a whole world’s worth of territory has got to be rough, but what’s even worse
is losing a password.
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