Competing claims to maritime jurisdiction in the Indian Ocean: implications for regional marine biodiversity and fisheries

The Indian Ocean encompasses an enormous maritime space that plays host to considerable marine resources including important maring biodiversity and fisheries resources. Substantial swaths of the Indian Ocean are subject to extensive national claims to maritime. jurisdiction. Thes claims provide coastal states with access to the h:mg and non-living resources of the Indian Ocean through the soverelgnty and soven'IH" rights within their claimed zones of maritime jurisdiction and these claime, therefore, represent tremendous potential maritime o?portumtles. There are, however, considerable challenges to contend with m terms of realizing these opportunities. Indeed, the resource-related economic benefits that were generally anticipated to flow on from these broad maritime claims made by the predominantly developing Indian Ocean coastal states have largely not lived up to initial expectations.