Cover Image Source: “Bering in dire straits” by European Space Agency, CC BY-SA 2.0
Author’s Note: The Bering Strait belongs in the Strategic Waterways Under Pressure series because it shifts the focus from dramatic closure scenarios to a different kind of pressure. This case examines how a narrow Arctic gateway remains open while facing growing operational, environmental, and social pressures.
As Arctic shipping becomes increasingly viable, the Bering Strait is emerging as a critical test case for Arctic governance. The central concern is not the formal possibility of closure, but whether this narrow and environmentally fragile international strait can remain functionally accessible as vessel traffic increases while emergency-response capabilities remain limited.
In this practical, rather than legal, sense, the Bering Strait illustrates what may be described as conditional passage. It remains legally open and, unlike the Strait of Hormuz, is not subject to coercive obstruction. Yet navigation is shaped—and at times constrained—by geographic conditions, ecological vulnerability, Indigenous subsistence activities, and regulatory requirements. The relevant question is therefore how that right can be exercised safely and sustainably.
The Bering Strait is the principal Pacific gateway to the Arctic. The NOAA Arctic Report Card 2022 notes that ship traffic entering the Central Arctic Ocean predominantly approaches through the Bering Strait and Beaufort Sea, describing it as the narrowest chokepoint into and out of the Arctic Ocean. Its strategic importance is therefore likely to increase as Arctic maritime activity expands.
Recent shipping data reinforce this picture. According to the Arctic Council’s Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) Working Group, 1,812 unique ships entered the Arctic Polar Code area in 2025, a 40 percent increase from 2013, while the total distance sailed grew by 95 percent. Although these figures do not suggest that the Arctic has become a consistently viable commercial route, they confirm that maritime activity in the region is expanding.
This growth in maritime activity also has significant local consequences. The Bering Strait is bordered by Indigenous communities whose food security, cultural practices, and livelihoods remain closely tied to the marine environment. PAME has repeatedly identified these communities as among those most exposed to the environmental impacts of shipping, including pollution and ecosystem degradation. As traffic increases, managing these competing demands becomes a defining challenge for the strait.
The Bering Strait is generally regarded as a strait used for international navigation within the meaning of Part III of UNCLOS, connecting the maritime areas of the Bering Sea with those of the Chukchi Sea and the wider Arctic Ocean.
This does not displace the sovereignty or jurisdiction of the States bordering the strait. As elsewhere under Part III of UNCLOS, their sovereignty over the waters, airspace, seabed, and subsoil of the strait remains intact, but must be exercised consistently with the transit-passage regime and other applicable rules of international law. Measures concerning navigational safety, ships’ routing, and pollution prevention may therefore be lawful, provided that they fall within the competence of the bordering States and comply with the applicable international procedures and standards. What those States may not do is convert a regime of transit passage into one of prior authorization, discriminate in form or in fact among foreign ships, or adopt measures whose practical effect is to deny, hamper, or impair passage.
In the Bering Strait, this distinction carries particular practical significance. As a narrow, navigationally challenging, and environmentally sensitive gateway, the strait necessarily calls for more intensive navigational management than the open ocean. The relevant legal question is therefore whether such measures remain compatible with the continued exercise of transit passage.
The clearest recent example of managed openness is the ships’ routing system adopted through the International Maritime Organization (IMO). In May 2018, the IMO Maritime Safety Committee adopted new routing measures for the Bering Sea and Bering Strait. These comprised six voluntary two-way routes, six precautionary areas, and three recommendatory areas to be avoided. The measures took effect on 1 December 2018 and were the first ships’ routing measures adopted by the IMO for the Arctic region in which the Polar Code applies.
Rather than restricting passage, the routing measures are designed to reduce the risk of maritime incidents, improve navigational safety, and protect the region’s fragile marine environment. By directing vessels toward safer and more predictable routes, they may also reduce interference with fishing, subsistence, and other local maritime activities. They thus illustrate a facilitative model of regulation: navigational management supports, rather than diminishes, the exercise of transit passage.
The same broader principle is reflected in the IMO Polar Code, whose mandatory provisions entered into force under SOLAS and MARPOL on 1 January 2017. The Code neither creates nor modifies any rite of passage in Arctic waters. Instead, for vessels falling within its scope, it establishes requirements concerning ship certification, voyage planning, design and equipment, operational preparedness, personnel training, and pollution prevention. The Code thus shapes the manner in which polar navigation is conducted without altering the underlying rite of passage.
The principal source of pressure in the Bering Strait today is not deliberate obstruction, but the concentration of navigational risk. Increasing vessel traffic, growing reliance on a single maritime gateway, and the potentially severe consequences of an accident converge in a narrow passage characterized by severe weather, seasonal ice, incomplete hydrographic coverage, and limited emergency-response capacity. More broadly, IMO materials on polar shipping emphasize the challenges posed by inadequate navigational information and infrastructure, difficult communications, and the remoteness and expense of search-and-rescue and pollution-response operations.
The legal right of transit passage remains intact, but the route’s practical accessibility increasingly depends on vessels’ use of recommendatory routing measures, their polar capabilities, prevailing ice and weather conditions, the availability of emergency support, and effective environmental-risk management.
The Bering Strait is consequently better understood as a case of managed openness than as one of de facto obstruction. Its physical, environmental, and operational constraints do not alter the underlying legal right of transit passage, but they shape the conditions under which that right can be exercised safely and effectively.
The broader significance of the Bering Strait lies in its intermediate position. It is neither a classic case of threatened closure nor an example of frictionless navigation. Rather, it demonstrates how a strategically indispensable waterway can remain legally open while becoming progressively more demanding to navigate.
In this respect, the Bering Strait sharpens the central argument of this series. The transit-passage regime is tested not only when States directly challenge or obstruct it, but also when the practical exercise of navigational rights becomes increasingly dependent on recommended routing measures, vessel capability, risk management, and environmental safeguards. Most such measures are both lawful and necessary. The continuing challenge is to ensure that such measures remain proportionate to navigational and environmental risks without unduly constraining the practical exercise of transit passage.
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