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The legal regime of the Arctic maritime areas has long remained on the backburner as far as the creation of multilateral agreements is concerned. The Arctic's inhospitable climate created natural barriers for the activities of man and limited the usefulness of available technology. At present, however, climate change seems to be responsible for a marked heating up, not only of the physical environment of the Arctic, but of the political tensions concerning the exact legal regime to be applied in the region. This Article will examine the present-day legal status of the Arctic. Since almost all territorial claims have been settled in the area, only Arctic water areas will retain our attention. And, within the multitude of possible offshore activities, this Article will focus solely on navigation. Part I discusses the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which seems to have finally become a generally accepted legal cornerstone for appreciating the legal status of these waters. Part II considers climate change in the Arctic and Part III elaborates on how this may impact the legal regime of navigation there. Subsequently, Part IV analyzes the vulnerability as well as the adaptive capacity of the 1982 Convention. Finally, Part V suggests how the existing legal system can better meet the new challenges climate change poses for Arctic water expanses.

14 páginas, 8 figuras, 4 tablas., Latitudinal clines in species diversity in limnic and terrestrial habitats have been noted for well over a century and are consistent across many taxonomic groups. However, studies in marine systems over the past 2 to 3 decades have yielded equivocal results. We conducted initial analyses of the MarBEF (EU Network of Excellence for Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function) database to test for trends in local and regional diversity over the latitudinal extent of European continental-shelf waters (36° to 81° N). Soft-sediment benthic macrofauna exhibit little evidence of a latitudinal cline in local (α-) diversity measures. Relationships with water depth were relatively strong and complex. Statistically significant latitudinal trends were small and positive, suggesting a modest increase in diversity with latitude once water-depth covariates were removed. These results are consistent regardless of whether subsets of the database were used, replicates were pooled, or component taxonomical groups were evaluated separately. Local and regional diversity measures were significantly and positively correlated. Scientific cooperation through data-sharing is a powerful tool with which to address fundamental ecological and evolutionary questions relating to large-scale patterns and processes., The authors acknowledge the support of the MarBEF Network of Excellence ‘Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning’ which is funded by the Sustainable Development, Global Change and Ecosystems Programme of the European Community’s Sixth Framework Programme (contract no. GOCE-CT-2003-505446). This publication is contribution no. MPS-09014 of MarBEF.