ABSTRACT
Polar areas are particularly vulnerable to oil spills. This chapter focuses on international law on liability for oil spills in polar areas, typically for cleaning up. There are many general conventions and a special Antarctic liability regime, but none of them have been designed for high seas’ liability. Pollution damage at high seas is more practical in polar areas than elsewhere, as the ice might make clean-up operations necessary at high seas and as at least parts of the Antarctica lack coastal zones. It adds to the complexity that the scope of international conventions depends on the existence of coastal zones and that they are disputed in the Antarctica and around Svalbard.
