7 - Epilogue

Summary

This book has undertaken a critical assessment and proposed a reconstruction of the legal framework addressing the protection of non-state actors’ rights in maritime delimitation. An increasing number of coastal states grant private exploratory, fishing and scientific research rights in marine and submarine areas to which neighbouring states with opposite or adjacent coasts also lay claim. If delimitation follows, those rights may become threatened with reallocation from the state which originally created them to the neighbouring state. The sudden displacement of private rights from one jurisdiction to another can affect the legal and economic interests of their holders.