1.1 maritime areas in globalisation

When was the maritime zones decided?

In Montego bay in 1982

Globalisation

The increasing interconnectedness of the world economic, political and cultural dimensions, driven by international flows of finance, people goods, services and information. An ongoing process

(ex) Periods in which globalization faces/faced setbacks

• The COVID 19 pandemic

• Periods of rising protectionism

Why are oceans important

Cover over 71% of the Earth’s surface, they produce more than half of the oxygen we breathe, provide food for around three billion people, regulate global climate and connect communities accross communities across continents

What are maritime zones defined by?

International law, primarily under UNCLOS : united nation convention of the law of the sea 1982

Seas

Smaller partly enclosed bodies of salt water connected to an ocean

Oceans

The largest continuous bodies of salt water covering most of the planets surface

What are the maritime zones defined by international law under the UNCLOS?

• Internal waters

• Territorial sea

• Contiguous zone

• Exclusive economic zones

• Continent shelf

• High seas

Internal waters

Fully under state sovereignty

(ex) internal water s

• Ports

• Bays

Territorial sea

Up tot 12 nautical miles; full state sovereignty

Contiguous zone

Up to 24 nautical miles; state enforces customs and immigration law

Exclusive economic zones EEZ

Up to 200 nautical miles; exclusive rights to exploit natural resources

Continental shelf

Submerged landmass extensions; soverign states may exploit seabed resources

High seas

Beyond nattional jurisdiction; open to all states

What do maritime zones do?

They regulate access to fisheries, energy resources and shipping routes, but also generate geopolitical tensions where territorial claims overlap

What ressources do seas and oceans provide?

They provide a wide range of valuable ressources for economic activity and human development

• Energy and mineal ressources

• Fishery and biomass ressources

• Marine landscapes and tourism

The oceans are a source of energy ressources

• Offshore oil and gas fields account for around 30% of global oil production

• Renewable marine energy (offshore wind, tidal power, ocean thermal systems) is an increasingly important frontier as countries reduce dependence on fossil fuels

Major extraction areas of oshore oil and gas fields

The gulf of mexico, the gulf of guinea, and the south china sea

The ocean floor contains mineral ressources

• Manganese nodules (rich in cobalt, nickel and copper)

• Rare earth metals, critical for electronics and green technologies

However underwater rare earth minerals…

…Remain largely unexploited, due to the depth, technical difficulty and environmental risk of extraction

Fishing

Ranges from small-scale artisanal practices to large scale industrial fishing by factory trawlers

How is aquaculture doing?

It’s growing rapidly, and now accounts for over half of the fish consumed worldwide

Marine biomass uses

Seaweed and kelp, has applications in food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and biofuels

What is a serious concern in the realm of fishing?

Overfishing, the FAO estimates that over 35% of global fish stocks are now overexploited

What do coastal and and marine environnements generate?

Significant tourism revenue, particularly for smaller island states

What illustrates the globalisation of leisure?

Cruise tourism

The most popular sectors of cruise tourism and where it’s expanding

Caribian and mediterranean are the most popular destinations, and it’s expanding to the North sea, east Asia, and polar regions,

What concerns arise alongside cruise tourism?

Environmental concerns, as cruise ships are among the most polluting forms of transport per passenger

What were the different waves of globalisation?

1. 1500s

2. 19th century

3. 1980s

TEU

Twenty equivalent unit

What makes the world’s oceans the backbone of the global economy?

The combination of material flows and immaterial flows

What are maritime spaces crossed by?

a variety of flows that are fundemental to globalisation

What are the essential flows of globalisation that cross maritime areas?

Goods, energy, materials and people

What are the most visible flows in maritime areas?

Merchandise : around 90% of the world tarde by volume is transported by sea, primarily through container shipping

What is the backbone of globalisation?

Maritime flow and networks

Maritime routes carry energy ressources, particularly…

Oil and liquified natural gas LNG

Flows of people also cross the sea through…

Tourism, migration and regular ferry services

What kind of merchandise flows through the seas?

Energy ressources, raw materials, agricultural products, and manufactured goods

The big four

The four commodities that have historically dominated global maritime tarde by volume

1. Oil

2. Minerals

3. Coal

4. Cereals

Oil is one of the big four transported across the sea…

… it is transported mainly by supertankers from producing regions to consummer markets

(ex) oil transported mainly by supertankers from producing regions to consummer markets

• Producing regions : person gulf

• Consummer markets : in Europe north america and east Asia

Minerals are one of the major ressources transported across the sea…

.. iron ore in particular, they’re shipped in bulk carries from major exporters to steel producing countries

Minerals, iron ore in particular, are shipped in bulk carries from major exporters to steel producing countries

• Major exporters : Australia and Brazil

• Steel producing countries : above all China

Coal is on of the major ressources transported across the sea…

… it’s transported from exporters to countries that rely on it for electricity generation and steel production

(ex) Coal is transported from exporters (to countries that rely on it for electricity generation and steel production)

• Exporters countries: Australia, Indonesia and couth africa

Cereals are one of the major things transported across the sea…

… exported from major agricultural producers to food importing regions

(ex) cereals are some of the most transported good across the sea, exported from major agricultural producers

• Cereals : wheat, maize, soybeans

• Major agricultural producers : united states, Brazil, Argentina, Ukraine

Containerisation

Reers to the use of standardized metal boxes, shipping containers, to transport good by sea, rail and road. Introduced in the late 1950s by American entrepreneur Malcom McLean, it had become o,e of the most transformative innovations in the history of global trade

Why has containerisation served to be one of the most transformative innovations in global trade?

Standardized containers allow products to be intermodal : transfered quickly and efficiently between ships trains and trucks, dramatically reducing the handling time, transport costs and the risk of damage or theft. This allows TNCs to become key drivers of the new international division of labor and underpin GVCs by enabling production to be fragmented across multiple countries

How containerisation allows TNCs to reinforce the NIDL

Transnational corporations can organise complex global supply chains and relocate manufacturing to countries with lower production costs

What dominates global trade?

a small number of shipping companies that togetehr control over half of global container capacity. They operate vast fleets of ultra-alrge container ships along fixed global routes

Nodal points

Major ports in key locations that connect maritime networks

(ex) The largest giant shipping companies that dominated global trade

• MSC Mediterranean shipping company, italian

• Maersk, Danish

• CMA CGM, France

Large port hubs

They act as nodal points in maritime shipping networks, redistributing good to smaller regional ports via feeder services. Their location structure and interconnectivity determine which regions are well integrated into global trade and which are not

Limits and challenges of containerisation

it carries significant costs. Environmentally, international shipping accounts for around 2% of global CO² emissions + fuel emissions, accidental spill and containers lost at sea damage marine exosystems and threaten wildlif. At the end of their lifespan ships are dismznteled in ship-breaking yards in south Asia under dangerous working conditions, releasing toxic materials that pollute beaches and coastal waters

What are the less visible but still important flows that go through the seas and oceans? (The invisible infrastrcture of globalisation

Immaterial flows

Maritime immaterial flows

Over 95% of digital communication are transmitted through a network of submarine cables laid on the ocean floor, sometimes at depths of several thousand meters

Ex International digital communications

• Telephone calls

• Internet traffic

• Financial transactions

When did undersea cables first appear?

The first date e back to the mid 19th century, when telegraphic cables connected Europe to the East Coast of the US, revolutionising long distance communication

What can be said to compare the first undersea cables of the mid 19th century and the network now?

The network has expanded dramatically; today it is comprised of over 400 active cables stretching more than 1.3 million kilometers.

What does today’s immense network of undersea cables make possible?

The real time transmission of data at extraordinary speeds, underpinning everything from everyday internet use to high-frequency financial trading where milliseconds determine the outcome of transactions worth billions of dollars

Like maritime trade routes, the submarine cable network reflects and reinforces…

Global inequalities

Where are most submarine cables located?

In the major costal metropolitan area of East Asia, Western Europe and the US

What is a consequence of the concentration of submarine cables in major metropolitan costal areas?

Landlocked countries and many developing nations are heavily dependaent on their neighbours and on a slakk number of landing station for their digital connectivity

Submarine cables are of critical strategic importance, and as such…

…their vulnerability is increasingly recognized by governments and security agencies

What are the vulnerabilities of submarine cables?

• They can be damaged by natural events : earthquakes, underwater landslides

• Or by deliberate acts including sabotage and espionage, especially I the context of geopolitical rivalry between major powers

Ex submarine cables can be damaged by acts of sabotage or espionnage in the context of geopolitical rivalry between major powers

In laet 2024 several cables in the Baltic Sea were severed in incidents widely a ttributed to deliberate interference linked to geopolitical tensions between Russia and Nato members

Why is the protection of submarine cables particularly important?

Unlike satellite which provide a backup but far lower bandwidth, there is currently no realistic alternative to submarine cables for high volume global data transmission, making their protection a matter of national and international security

How do maritime networks and spaces come into play with power?

Control over these networks, who owns them, who secures them, who is exploded from them is a major demonstration of their global power

Maritime station

The growing reliance on seas and oceans for global exchanges. It plays a central role in shaping the organisation of the global economy

Why can we say there is a phenomenon of maritimisation?

Maritime transport carries around 90% of the worlds trade by volume, connecting production entres, ressource-exporting regions and consummer markets across the world

How has maritimisation impacted certain infrastructures?

It's made ports and coastal regions crucial hubs, nodal points where flows converge and are redistributed inland. The territory each port serves may stretch hundreds of kilometers from the coast

What determines the integration of different territories in to the global economy?

The unevenly distributed benifits of maritimisaation alongside factors like the strategies of TNCs, geopolitical tensions over trade routes and chokepoints, and the broader structures of the NIDL

NIDL

The new international division of labour, the global shift whereby the manufacturing has relocated to emerging economies with lower labour costs, while developped countries specialize in high value services and management

What shift in global maritime tarde dominance has occured?

Asian ports now dominated maritime trade, having progressively displaced many western ports. This shift accelerated in the early 2000s as emerging economies increased trade amongst themselves in raw amterials, energy products and manufactured goods

What concretely illustrates the shift in global maritime trade dominance?

• The share of emerging countries in global maritime freight rose from 38% in 200 to nearly 60% in 2025, driven largely by Asia, and above all China, the primary beneficiary of the NIDL having become the worl'd’s leading manufacturing economy over this period.

• Many of the world’s top ports are located in asia.

The placement of Asian ports illustrate their growing maritime trade dominance + key example of how a major hub port can structure economic development far beyond the coastline

In 2015 15 of teh world’s top ports are located in Asia, of which 8 are Chinese, compared to just 2 in 2000. The port of Shanghai ranked first in the world, handled over 55 million TEUs in 2025. It’s vast hither land encompass the entire Yangtze river bassin and some of china’s most productive industrial regions. Shows how well a major hub port can structure economic development far beyond the coastline

Hinterland

the remote, rural, or inland area lying behind a coast, river, or major city

Not all regions benifit equally from maritimisation, such as…

… The least developped countries LDCs, found mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and among small island developing states remain marginally integrated into global maritime networks

Why are LDCs only marginally integrated into global maritime networks?

Small economies, limited port infrastructure, weak insertion into global value chains

What is the function of the marginally integrated ports of the LDCs? What are they trying to do (ex)

They function as minor hubs with narrow underdeveloped hinterlands, limiting their ability to attract investement or participate meaningfully in the NIDL. New efforts are underway at some ports, such as san Pedro in Côte d’Ivoire, but progress is uneven

How do the oceans themselves reglect the shifting geography of globalisation?

• The atlantic, once the primary axis of world trade, has given way to the Pacific and Idian Oceans as the new centers of global commerce

• Some seas are characterisedby intense regional flows

• Some are major transit corridors

• The caspiann sea and the Arctic ocean are in the process of entering global network

• Seas bordering the southern ocean remain largely untouched by maritimisation

Why are landlocked countries at a disadvantage?

• Because maritime access is so central to global trade. They face a significant strctural disadvantage and have to rely on the ports and hintherland infrastrctures of neighbouring states to connect to global markets.

• They are also dependent on the political stability and oppenness of their neighbours

• Higher transport costs for exports and imports make them less competitive on internaitonal markets, logistic costs that reduce their competitiveness when their economies rely heavily on the export of primary ressources

What figure reflecs the disadvantages of landlocked countries?

Of the 44 landlocked countries 32 are developping countries

What reirnforces the disadvantages of land locked countries?

Their marginal position in the NIDL, which tends to favor countries with direct maritime access and well developped port infrastructure

What have some land locked countries been able to do to get around their disadvantages? + Ex

They've partially compensated through transport corridors to maritime gateways with river navigation or road and rail link. Switzerland and Austria

Where are most of the landlocked develooppping countries weakly connected to global trade networks?

In Africa and Central Asia

Other than reinforcing the NIDL, and the dominance of major hubs, what has maritimisation supported?

The expansion of Global Value Chains GVCs

What, along with maritimisation can explain the spatial organisation of the global economy? (Global economic patterns)

• Politcal integration

• The strategies of TNCs

• Recent environnemental and geopolitical developpements

Matitimisation is not the exclusive factor in organisin gthe global economy, but…

It is the single most important factor, and provides the geographical framework within which other forces operate

Maritimisation’s impact on economic hubs?

Contributed significantly to their emmergence along the worlds Sea Lines of Communication SLOCs

Ex of major economic hubs that emerged along the world SOLCs due to maritimisation

• Singapore located on the straight of Malacca, one of the world’s leading transhipement hubs because it controls one of the most busiest maritime chokehold points on Earth

• Rotterdam dominated European matitime trade trjoguh it's strategic position on the Northern range

• Shanghai has developped into the world’s busiest container port

Ports that are Major economic hubs along the world’s SLOCs

They concentrate logistics, manufacturing, finance and advanceds services because they connect matime flowd with vast production and consumption markets

Ex : maritimisation has transformed coastal regions into the core spaces of the global economy, turning some places into the worlds most powerful maritime façades

• East Asia

• The northern range in western Europe

• The North'6Eastern Seabord of North America

Ex : what places has benefited from direct access to global shipping routes and international markets

• The Pearl River Delta in China

• Randstad in the Netherands

• BosWash worridor in the US

What do coastal regions attract thanks to matitime accessibility?

Maritime facilitates participation in global trade so they attract industruesn investement, innocation and skilled labour

How has poltiical integration played a decisive role in directing global trade?

Regional organisation have strengthened economic integration by reducing tariffs, harmonising regulations and encouraging cross-border investement. Thry dtermine where maritime glows develop by encouraging economic integration and international specialisation

Ex of regional organisations that have strenghtened economic integration?

• The EU : a large proportion of trade within it takes place accross land borders

• ASEAN : has facilitated the developemnt of regionbal production networks through SouthEast Asia

How do TNCs play a decisive roel in organising global production?

Comapnies distribute different stages of production across several different countries accoridng to labour costs, taxation policies, infrastrctures and market opportunities. Shipping companies repond to these production networks