The existing status of the Vistula Lagoon and the Vistula Spit and the stable status of Polish-Russian agreements supplemented with regulations from the early 1990s raise doubts on the Polish side. The proposed canal that will cut across the Vistula Spit will also run through terrain that is under the special protection of both internal and European laws (Natura 2000). Currently, from a legal perspective, it is difficult to predict the successful outcome of the undertaking. The very decision to build a canal should be preceded by in-depth studies of the profitability of such an undertaking. This refers to the unique natural values of the Vistula Lagoon and the Spit. This may also present certain complications in Polish-Russian relations.

The obligation of states to guarantee the sustainable use of the natural resources of the seas and oceans is a result of the regulations of international law. Above all, these emphasize the necessity of linking the process of managing those resources with protection of the marine environment in which they occur. Less attention, however, is paid to the social consequences of not fulfilling the duty to use resources sustainable. The subject of this article is the heterogeneous scope of rights and duties of individual states to use marine resources, dependent on the geographical localization of these resources. Attention will also be given to the central role which is fulfilled, in the context o f the law of the sea, by the whole set of legal principles, according to which states using resources should be guided with the aim of ensuring the sustainable exploitation of those resources.

A recent and vigorous debate on the volume of mineral resources remaining in Poland prompts analysis on legal aspects of their exploitation in the context of protection of the country’s natural heritage. Economic growth requires consumption offossil fuels. Short-term economic solutions however invoke difficulties ahead. The article examines whether Polish legal framework meets the challenge.

The demarcation of ocean areas requires a consideration of a whole range of legal provisions. But there also exist many aspects of an extra-legal nature which have a substantive effect on the ultimate course of ocean borders. Demarcation has not lost its contemporary importance either from a legal or from a political point of view - for example, in the case of the Snake Island dispute between Ukraine and Romania, the dispute over the Spratly and Paracel islands, and the dispute between Japan and Russia about the Kuril Islands. The author of the article predicts that in the immediate future we must count on a growth in the importance of the demarcation issue. She is a proponent of the most commonly applied method in international law o f settling disputes of this kind - that is the principle o f equidistance. In accordance with the UN Convention (10 December 1982), she thinks that when one is dividing up the territory o f a shelf area or of economic zones, it is vital to come to an appropriate solution o f the dispute.