The régime of islands and sea-level rise

Climate change resulting from human activity is causing sea-levels to rise. Rising sea-levels pose an existential threat to small islands. Some have argued that this might result in islands losing their status as ‘islands’ and, at the same time, their maritime areas. The present article disagrees. In order to qualify as an ‘island’, a coastal feature must be ‘a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide’: Article 121(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). A feature that meets these requirements is, according to Article 121(2), entitled to a territorial sea, an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf. Article 121(3) provides that rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or an economic life of their own have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. The words ‘naturally formed area of land’, as well as broader considerations, suggest that the status of a feature is determined on the basis of its natural condition—not changes generated by human activity. Just as construction through human artifice cannot elevate a coastal feature into an island, man-made climate change which causes sea-level rise cannot turn an island into something other than what is described in Article 121(1).