Submarine cables and pipelines laid on the seabed remain the foundation of the global communications network and the offshore energy transportation system that facilitates the increasing globalisation and interconnectedness of the world. The laying of submarine cables and pipelines has been preserved as a freedom to all States in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). This chapter examines the increasing challenges faced by States when exercising this freedom and discusses means to prevent and resolve conflicts. First, a number of coastal States have made excessive claims based on a liberal interpretation of relevant provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, such as the requirement of preauthorization of the survey, laying and repair of submarine cables. Secondly, submarine cables and pipelines are subjected to undue interference and damages, both intentional and incidental by other competing uses of ocean space. The coastal State has an important role to play in maintaining and protecting the freedom to lay submarine cables and pipelines.

The winds howled as the members of the First Combat Intelligence Platoon mushed their huskies through the darkness of an Arctic January day. Temperatures reached −43 degrees Celsius as the men scouted the river valleys and mountain passes of Alaska’s Brooks Range. This was no ordinary mission, and these men were no regular infantry. The platoon, comprised of soldiers from the Alaska Territorial Guard (ATG) – a military reserve force of Alaska Natives known as the ‘Eskimo Scouts’ – was the vanguard of the first reconnaissance survey of a petroleum pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope. In the early winter of 1945, three ATG patrols totalling eight men spearheaded a survey of a potential pipeline route from Livengood, north of Fairbanks, to Umiat on the North Slope. The men travelled over 3,200 km by dogsled in the middle of Arctic winter, battling snow deeper than a metre.

This chapter will examine rules governing the contiguous zone, the EEZ and the continental shelf. In the contiguous zone, the coastal State may exercise the control necessary to prevent and punish infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea. While the LOSC contains only succinct provisions respecting the contiguous zone, the legal nature of the coastal State jurisdiction over the zone deserves serious consideration. The raison dtre of the institution of the EEZ and the continental shelf involves the conservation and management of natural resources. Owing to the increasing importance of marine natural resources, these zones are particularly important for coastal States. This chapter will discuss the following issues in particular: (1) the coastal State jurisdiction over the contiguous zone, (2) the coastal State jurisdiction over the EEZ and the continental shelf, (3) the freedoms that all States can enjoy in the EEZ, (4) the criteria for determining the outer limits of the continental shelf, and (5) the due regard obligations in the EEZ and the continental shelf.

This chapter examines the relationships between representations and operations of sovereignty in natural resource governance. We advance a ‘political ecology of sovereignty’, examining the participation of non-state actors in resource governance processes. We particularly argue that processes of integrating subaltern populations through mapping local ecological knowledge can modify effective governance practices while nonetheless reproducing the legibility of state sovereign authority and its territorial boundaries. Exploring the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline in Canada, we suggest that state jurisdictional authority is secured through incorporating Indigenous interests as a delimited geography of tradition. Examining the Hatgyi hydroelectric development along the Thai–Myanmar border, we argue that the territorial boundaries of those nation-states are rearticulated through the governance of this transboundary development. Through these cases, we demonstrate how the insertion of local knowledge works not only to reconfigure effective governance processes but also to reinforce the effect of state sovereignty in new ways.

This chapter examines the use of the ad hoc approach to energy governance in the context of the exploitation of certain resources, hydroelectricity and offshore wind power, and then in that relating to fixed transmission infrastructures, pipelines and electricity transmission lines. The increasing variety of applications of the ad hoc approach, particularly to modern renewable energies and electrification, can be seen as a manifestation of the ongoing energy transition. From the analytical perspective used in this book, such applications illustrate the ad hoc legal organisation of new transactions, enabled by the energy transition.

The extensive forests of the Appalachian basin have high ecological value providing critical ecosystem services as well as important habitat for vulnerable species. The Marcellus and Utica shale plays underlay much of this ecosystem, and the overlap between core forest habitat and the shale plays results in an ecosystem that is at high vulnerability to disturbance. We summarize the current extent of development and the documented and predicted effects on the Appalachian forest ecosystem. Development fragments forest habitat and results in loss of core forest primarily as a result of linear infrastructure such as pipelines and roads. USG is associated with higher levels of noise and other disturbance, increased spread of invasive plants and increased risk of contamination to surface water. Future planning and policies should be designed to protect the health and integrity of the core forests of the Appalachian basin by implementing practices to minimize fragmentation, the spread of invasive plants, noise pollution and degradation of water quality and aquatic resources as well as refining techniques for minimizing the overall footprint and implementing site reclamation.

Oil and gas extraction and infrastructure compete with economic activities on public and private lands, and thanks to the Trump administration, the industry secured even more privileges for its operations. The administration reoriented federal agencies with oil and gas insiders at their helm to open more public lands to drilling, despite companies not drilling on half of the 23 million acres already leased and despite the sizable financial and ecosystem benefits from conservation. It facilitated the buildout of interstate gas pipelines by promulgating regulations that narrowed states’ powers to protect their water resources from proposed pipelines and by narrowing federal agencies’ assessment of the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects. It weakened the legal oversight of oil and gas operations that already enjoyed exemptions from a number of provisions under federal environmental laws. Despite professed concerns for private property rights, congressional Republicans failed to take steps to improve protections for landowners whose lands were traversed by pipeline projects. Despite Congress’s pervasive failures to keep the administration in check, the rare bipartisan legislation that provided conservation protections to segments of public lands offers some hope that voters’ strong support for public lands, as evidenced in polls, can still compel Congress to take critical action.

Native Americans have fought to protect their land and water resources from oil and gas extraction and from pipelines and fossil fuel export terminals that traverse their reservation lands, off-reservation lands and public lands to which they hold historical and cultural ties. The Trump administration reversed tribes’ hard-won successes and exacerbated centuries of prior injustices. Trump asserted disputed presidential powers to permit the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, to shrink national monuments, including the Bears Ears National Monument, the first national monument proposed and co-managed by Native American tribes, and to open former monument lands to drilling. In their fight against these decisions, tribes advanced legal arguments based on federal laws, including environmental laws, and asserted their rights to reservation lands and their treaty hunting, fishing and gathering rights on off-reservation lands. Within reservations, tribes, like other Americans, are grappling with whether to rely on fossil fuels or to transition to renewable energy. The appointment of Representative Debra Haaland, who led Congress’s efforts to protect Native American lands and public lands, as the first Native American secretary of the Interior offers hope for a reset in US government relations with the first sovereign nations.

In this chapter, we consider the strategies that platforms can use first to launch their operations and, later, to expand them. In Section 4.1, we explore the economic trade-offs for a firm of choosing a (two- sided) platform model rather than alternative modes of organization. For firms adopting the two-sided platform model, we then expose the difficulties that they will inevitably face when trying to bring two groups of agents together: we formalize, in Section 4.2, what is known as the “chicken-and- egg problem” and show how an adequate choice of strategies may solve it. In Section 4.3, we discuss the strategies that platforms can implement to increase the level of trust among users, thereby securing their participation and, possibly, intensifying the network effects. Finally, in Section 4.4, we examine why and how a platform may decide to expand the range of services that it offers.

The aim of this chapter is two-fold. First, the authors present a practical application of multidisciplinary research based on the experience of editing a book comprised of multidisciplinary cases and focusing on two chapter cases. There are many theoretical accounts of how one may approach multidisciplinary research, but here the authors aim to offer a practical account of how the theoretical goal of multidisciplinary research can play out in the ‘real world’. After addressing the current conceptual understanding of multidisciplinary versus interdisciplinary research, the authors will explain how useful these concepts, in fact, are when applied to the typical constraints that many academics face today in conducting joint research. The authors, who are both editors of the book, will provide lessons for future multidisciplinary collaboration and suggestions for developing methods of multidisciplinary research.

This chapter is a multidisciplinary analysis and case study on one of Russia’s newest pipelines, the Power of Siberia, designed to deliver natural gas from Siberia to the Chinese market, connecting the two countries by pipeline. The authors conclude that the Power of Siberia project, although in its infancy, appears to have a mixed track record. On the one hand, it provides both Russia and China with important market and supply diversification. And although this contributes to greater energy security, the economic advantages look to be more one-sided, benefitting Russia in the short term but raising questions about the long-term viability of the project. The pipeline evades the scrutiny of international norms and legal frameworks, on which both countries seem to place less emphasis compared to similar pipelines connecting Russia to Europe. Related to this, the construction of the pipeline has not met the same international environmental standards of westbound pipelines, and this is adversely affecting indigenous communities in the Russian Far East. On a more global scale, however, the authors also raise the prospect of greater geopolitical instability in the region.