Prof. dr. sc. Davor Vidas

• Prof. Dr. Davor Vidas (Zagreb, 9 May 1960) is Research Professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway. He graduated in law (LL.B) at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law in 1983 and obtained his doctoral degree in law (LL.D) at the same Faculty in 1995. He was a member of the Department of Public International Law at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb from May 1984 to September 1992, and has since been associated with the Fridtjof Nansen Institute where he was Director of the Polar Regions Programme (1995–2002), after which, in 2003, he took up the position of Director of the Institute’s Law of the Sea and Marine Affairs Programme. In the course of the past 20 years, Professor Vidas has been Principal Investigator in over 15 research projects on various aspects of international law, including several major international projects, and has organised and chaired several international conferences on the law of the sea in Norway, Croatia and the UK (Wilton Park), and has been an invited keynote speaker, panel chair, and invited presenter at around 50 international conferences in various countries. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Law of the Sea Institute at the University of California, Berkeley; he was co-Chair of the IUCN Group of Legal Specialists on the Mediterranean (2006–2010); and co-Director of the International Postgraduate Seminar on the Law of the Sea at Inter-University Centre for Postgraduate Studies, Dubrovnik (1997–2002). At the International Law Association, Professor Vidas is the Chair of the International Committee on International Law and Sea Level Rise, and a member of the Committee on Baselines under the International Law of the Sea. At the International Commission on Stratigraphy, he has been a member of the Anthropocene Working Group since 2009. Professor Vidas is on the advisory editorial boards of international journals: International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law (Brill), Anthropocene Review (SAGE), and Climate Law (Brill). He is an autor or editor of several books, including: The World Ocean in Globalisation (Brill/Martinus Nijhoff, 2011), Law, Technology and Science for Oceans in Globalisation (Brill/Martinus Nijhoff, 2010), Croatian-Slovenian Delimitation (Školska knjiga, 2009), Zaštita Jadrana (Školska knjiga, 2007), Protecting the Polar Marine Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2006/2000), Implementing the Environmental Protection Regime for the Antarctic (Kluwer Academic, 2000) Order for the Oceans at the Turn of the Century (Kluwer Law International, 1999) and Governing the Antarctic (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

   Professor Vidas’ practical experience in international law includes acting as Counsel and Advocate for the Government of Croatia in the arbitration on resolving the land and maritime boundary dispute between Croatia and Slovenia (2011–present); Adviser/Member of Norwegian delegations to the International Maritime Organization (2004–2006), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Committee on Fisheries (2003), Commission  for the Conservation of the Antarctic Marine Living Resources (2001–2002), and the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (1992–2002). He was an external consultant to OECD (2004), on illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing; and to the United Nations Environment Program (2000), on Global Environmental Outlook.

   Professor Vidas is a member of the International Law Association (Norwegian Branch); European Society of International Law; Norwegian Society of International Law; American Society of International Law; and Croatian Society of International Law. He is also an Associate Member of the American Geophysical Union (2012).

   Professor Vidas has been actively engaged in popularising the law of the sea issues, in Croatia and elsewhere. He has co-authored screenplays for two TV documentaries on the law of the sea: ‘The Sea at a Court’ (Croatian Radiotelevision: Zagreb, 1998), and ‘Inventory of the Sea for the Third Millennium’ (Croatian Radiotelevision: Zagreb, 2008), and has published approximately 100 feature articles, commentaries, interviews and columns on various law of the sea issues in popular science journals, the press and other media.