friday, 15 August 1958

    • Iceland issued a declaration that, on 1 September 1958, it would extend its territorial waters from four nautical miles to twelve nautical miles.  In response, four UK Royal Navy warships took station within the 12-mile limit, to protect British fishing trawlers.  Dubbed the ‘Cod Wars’, the unilateral Icelandic extension caused consternation in among NATO allies, however, Iceland countered by threatening to withdraw from NATO, thus denying NATO allies access to the crucial anti-submarine warfare chokepoint known as the GIUK gap (between Greenland, Iceland and the UK).  The issue would eventually be resolved through the adopted of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, but not before numerous other confrontations – including in the International Court of Justice in the Fisheries Jurisdiction case.


    • The 1958 Convention on the Continental Shelf was adopted, which would serve in part as the basis of a landmark ICJ case eleven years later – the North Sea Continental Shelf Cases, involving the Federal Republic of Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands – where the Court put forward its formulation for how to determine when a treaty provision has transformed into customary international law, namely that the particular treaty provision must be fundamentally ‘norm-creating’ and not merely procedural.

    • The United Nations Convention on the Nationality of Married Women came into force. The convention was adopted to deal with issues that routinely arose regarding the enforced loss or acquisition of nationality by women as a result of marriage or divorce. The convention was a major step towards ensuring that the principles outlined in Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were enforced – that"everyone has a right to a nationality" and "no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality".

The Unusual Cocktail

Shamrock

45mls Whiskey

45mls Dry Vermouth

7.5mls Green Chartreuse

7.5ml Green Crème de Menthe

International Law in a Glass

Chartreuse and Climate Change

For an Irish-themed cocktail, the Shamrock contains a uniquely French liqueur – Chartreuse.  Chartreuse is one of the oldest proprietary drinks available – distilled alcohol is steeped with 130 herbs, flowers, and plants, many of which grow in the alpine region of the Chartreuse Mountains, north of Grenoble in southwestern France.

Chartreuse, like Bénédictine D.O.M, Dom Perignon, and Trappist beer, belong to a unique category of alcoholic drinks brewed or distilled by religious orders. In the case of Chartreuse, it was first produced by Carthusian monks in 1737, with the origin story of Chartreuse stating that

a French nobleman, François-Annibal d’Estrées, bequeathed the formula for a “long life” elixir to the Carthusian order in 1605. Known today as the Elixir Végétal de la Grande Chartreuse, it has been sold by the order at least since 1764.’.

Chartreuse fell out of favour for much of the 1900s, however, at the turn of the century, the craft cocktail boom, reputedly spurred renewed interest in Chartreuse,  with production hitting peaks of 1.5 million bottles per year.   

However, in recent years, the production of Chartreuse has stagnated – not for a lack of interest but as a result of the deliberate decision by the Carthusian order driven, in part, by concerns regarding climate change. In January 2023, the French distributors who handle Chartreuse sent out a letter to their international distributors, in which they reported that in 2019, the Order had decided not to increase their production of Chartreuse noting, among other factors, that ‘making millions of cases does not make any sense in today’s environmental context and will have a negative impact on the planet in the very short term.’  

Indeed, research into climate change has shown that alpine regions, like those of the Chartreuse Mountains, are ‘irrevocably changing’ resulting in threats to the herbs and wildflowers that grow in alpine regions and that, in the case of Chartreuse, are believed to make up the numerous ingredients of the liqueur. 

One particular plant – Artemisia genipi, or black wormwood – is used in Chartreuse, as well as absinthe and amari (other well-known alpine liqueurs).  Black wormwood is known as a pioneer plant – a hardy but slow-growing plant that is well-adapted to growing in rocky and nutrient-poor pro-glacial regions.  As pioneer plants establish themselves, they “prime” the territory for other plants to grow and flourish – essentially, pioneer plants pave the way for other plants to establish themselves, improving biodiversity.  

However, as glaciers retreat, the available area for such plants diminishes and the changing temperature and ecology of the de-glaciated areas allows for faster growing monocultures of grasses to proliferate, impacting the appearance and biodiversity of the region.  In a 2021 study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, scientists predicted that 22% of alpine plants are at risk of extinction due to glacier retreat. 

The threat to biodiversity is a major concern of the United Nations work on climate change – the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted in 1993, and the United Nations General Assembly at its 65th session declared the period 2011-2020 to be the “United Nations Decade on Biodiversity, with a view to contributing to the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity for the period 2011-2020”.  In 2022, the COP15 meeting agreed to adopt the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework outlining four long-term goals and 23 targets to increase biodiversity, reduce threats to biodiversity, and ensure sustainable use and benefit-sharing of the natural environment. 

Emily Crawford