The rising politics of sea level: demarcating territory in a vertically relative world

ABSTRACT

Sea level rise has destructive material impacts on coastal communities and low-lying nations. While it is largely perceived and experienced via these impacts, the level of the sea is less often thought about as a political surface. The boundary where land and sea intersect is determined by the ocean’s height, manifesting materially as a realm of coastal features and produced politically as baselines. Defined through international treaties, baselines are the low-water line upon which national boundaries are traced. Yet, this line between adjoining mediums of land and sea is much more physically blurred and dynamic than represented politically and legally. The difficulties of delimiting a coastline, a phenomenon referred to as the Coastline Paradox, means the measurement of a coastline is dependent on the ruler used, an entanglement of instrument and measurement. As rising sea levels encroach on physical coastlines, they are also impacting legal baselines, shifting national terrestrial and maritime borders inland posing existential dilemmas to island and low-lying nations. This paper examines how the concept of sea level was constructed scientifically and is enrolled in the legal demarcation of territorial borders, with the goal of examining how sea level rise politically marks a climatically changing world.

KEYWORDS:

• sea level rise
• baselines
• territory
• materiality
• verticality
• geopolitics

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An early version of this paper was formulated as a dissertation chapter for which the author thanks members of the committee: Jeffrey Banister, Steven Yool, Vincent Del Casino, Philip Steinberg and Sarah Moore. A special thanks to the supportive community at the University of Arizona School of Geography & Development, especially members of the Tucson Aquatic Enthusiast Society. The author acknowledges the encouragement and critique from organizers and participants at the Shifting Baselines, Altered Horizons: Politics, Practices, and Knowledge in Environmental Science and Policy workshop held at the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany, 2018. The author is also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and editors for constructive feedback on earlier drafts.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, Gaven Reef, Hughes Reef, Johnson Reef, Mischief Reef and Subi Reef.