On The Legal Protection Of Sino Russian Arctic Energy Cooperation And Development

The Arctic region is rich in oil,natural gas and other energy resources.With the Arctic temperature rising year by year,the Arctic energy exploitation has gradually moved from theory to practice.As an important part of the "ice silk road" jointly built by China and Russia,China Russia Arctic energy cooperation and development has broad prospects.It will maximize the energy interests of China and Russia and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results.From the perspective of Russia,China Russia Arctic energy cooperation will provide strong financial support and broad overseas markets for Russia’s energy development,thus promoting Russia’s domestic economic development;From the perspective of China,China Russia Arctic energy cooperation will ensure China’s energy strategic security and alleviate China’s energy demand crisis.At the same time,China Russia Arctic energy cooperation will give China the right to participate in Arctic affairs and enhance China’s discourse status in the Arctic public domain.At present,a number of international conventions and regional multilateral agreements have given China the legitimacy to participate in the development of Arctic energy.The Sino Russian bilateral agreements and the domestic energy laws and regulations of the two countries have laid a legal foundation for Sino Russian Arctic energy cooperation.However,the existing international treaties are not specific enough for the development of Arctic energy,and the demarcation of the outer continental shelf of the Arctic is not clear enough;There are a large number of regional multilateral agreements in the Arctic,but they do not involve the field of energy development,and most of the regional multilateral agreements in the field of energy development are soft legal norms that do not have mandatory binding force;The bilateral agreement on energy development signed by China and Russia is characterized by outstanding swearing nature and strong theoretical generality,and does not have the ability to guide the practical activities of Sino Russian cooperation in the development of Arctic energy;China’s domestic energy laws and regulations are not perfect,and the relevant energy development supervision mechanism is missing,which leads to the lack of complete legal constraints on state-owned enterprises’ participation in Arctic energy investment.However,Russia’s domestic energy laws have strong changes and obvious policy tendencies,which are also a huge obstacle on the road of cooperative development between the two sides.Therefore,in order to protect the interests of China and Russia and promote the steady progress of the cooperation and development of Arctic energy between the two countries,it is urgent to improve the relevant legal norms.From the international perspective,the Arctic region should break through the dilemma of ambiguous continental shelf delimitation in the United Nations Convention on the law of the sea,formulate an Arctic treaty with the exclusive nature of the Arctic,define the boundaries of the Arctic continental shelf,and regulate Arctic energy development activities;Arctic countries should use the platform of the Arctic Council to build a regional multilateral agreement on energy development with both "soft and hard laws" and focus on the field of Arctic energy development;China and Russia should revise the existing bilateral agreements on energy cooperation and refine the contents of the bilateral agreements so that they can actually guide the specific activities of China Russia Arctic energy cooperation and development.From the domestic level of the two countries,China’s domestic energy laws and regulations should be improved to effectively supervise and restrict the Arctic energy investment activities of Chinese enterprises.At the same time,Russia should ensure the stability of domestic energy laws and reduce the access threshold for foreign capital to enter the field of energy development,so as to jointly safeguard the practical interests of China and Russia in the cooperative development of Arctic energy.