The Svalbard Treaty (1920)

node · earth · Svalbard archipelago, Arctic Norway

Signed at Paris on 9 February 1920, it recognises the full and absolute sovereignty of Norway over the Svalbard archipelago while granting nationals of all parties equal rights of access and of commercial activity there, subject to Norwegian law, and restricting the use of the islands for warlike purposes. It is the third polar governance model and the one that shows the other two are not the only options: the Antarctic Treaty suspends the question of sovereignty, the Arctic states each answer it individually inside their own borders, and Svalbard answers it by pairing undivided sovereignty with open access. That is why a Russian mining settlement and a Chinese research station both operate on Norwegian territory. The precise reach of the equal-treatment provisions offshore, in waters governed by the modern law of the sea rather than by anything the 1920 negotiators imagined, is disputed.