Maritime safety and security have become matter of concern for many States and for the international community as a whole. The existing international legal framework, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 (UNCLOS), does not answer to all contemporary needs for ensuring safety and security within cross‐sectorial and ecosystem‐based approach to maritime governance. The MARSAFENET COST Action brings together experts in international law of the sea from 22 countries in order to increase the knowledge on maritime security and safety and to develop a common conceptual and methodological framework to help filling the legal gaps and to turn scientific results into feasible solutions.

The Arctic Ocean, unlike other fragile seas, has its own unique characteristics – remote geographical location; sparsely populated coastal zones with lack of proper infrastructure; lack of port facilities, monitoring and surveillance capability; lack of infrastructure on search and rescue, and pollution clean‐up operation mechanisms; requirements concerning ice‐strengthened vessels to operate in its waters etc. Whereas other fragile sea, such as the Mediterranean is evidently vulnerable to pollution because of the pressure of human civilization, the sensitivity to pollution of the Arctic Ocean is addressed from the rapidly increasing human activities. Its sensitive ecosystem is gradually being threatened by newly evolving challenges, the reason being the easy access to its marine area because of the faster sea ice melt.

The workshop aims at bringing these newly evolved challenges that the Arctic Ocean faces today, where it brings the questions, such as the identification of fragile sea, the role of science in determining the status of fragile sea, consequences pertaining to legal rights and obligations of states when the status of “fragile sea” is embedded. The workshop will particularly focus on the Arctic Ocean; however, it will compare the current governance of the Arctic Ocean regime from the viewpoint of other different regional approaches (i.e. the Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and the Baltic Sea etc.) while showing significant variations in approaches and potentially competing models of governance. In this context the workshop will address the similarities and differences between Arctic Ocean and other fragile seas, and their governance approaches, in order to promote the understanding of the lessons with a view to examining the possibility of importing any element within the governance framework.
The program of the Conference will be posted on www.marsafenet.org.

Date: February 20, 2015
Venue: Rovaniemi, Arctic Centre / University of Lapland, Arktikum house,
Pohjoisranta 4
Local Organiser: The Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law (NIEM)
Scientific Coordinator: Dr. Kamrul Hossain

The Call for papers
This call for paper is aimed at pulling together innovative papers on the above abstract paying special attention to the following maritime safety and security issues:

Theme 1:

Encountering new challenges to Arctic Ocean and other Fragile Seas

Panel 1: Pollution threats and Marine Environmental Protection
Panel 2: Economic usage and security

Theme 2:

Governance approach: Arctic Ocean and other Fragile Seas compared

Panel 1: Global and regional approach
Panel 2: Institutions and governance

PhD candidate:

We specially encourage early career researcher and PhD candidates
to submit abstracts for presentation.

Abstract submission:

We invite applicants to submit an abstract (max. 500 words) and a brief CV (max 1 page), by January 15, 2015, to Ms. Assi Harkoma 
(asmoilan@ulapland.fi), and copy to Dr. Kamrul Hossain (khossain@ulapland.fi).

Expenses:

Reasonable expenses for the participation of the selected experts will be
reimbursed according to Cost rules. All other participants including PhD candidates will cover their own costs by themselves.

Publication:

Accepted papers will be published. Selected candidates will be invited 

to submit a draft of the full paper by March 31, 2015 for the peer review process. Further details of peer review and editorial process will be given at a later stage.


According to the COST rules, English is the language of the Conference.