From what-if to what-now: Status of the deep-sea mining regulations and underlying drivers for outstanding issues

Abstract

The International Seabed Authority (ISA), established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is responsible for the governance of deep-sea mining in areas of the ocean beyond national jurisdiction (DSM), including the adoption of rules, regulations and procedures (RRPs) relating to DSM. As a result of actions by the Republic of Nauru, the ISA had been under pressure for the last two years to adopt RRPs for exploitation by July 2023 or face the possibility of evaluating a DSM application in the absence of such RRPs. In July 2023, the ISA was not able to finalize the RRPs but signaled its intent to continue working on them, with a view to their adoption by 2025. Negotiations on the timeline for the adoption of the RRPs were contentious with some member States wanting a binding target date and others expressing concern of being bound to arbitrary deadlines. This paper identifies major issues that remain outstanding in the draft RRPs relating to exploitation and discusses the underlying drivers for their lack of agreement with the aim of providing an indication of the amount of work ahead for the ISA. We find that over 30 major regulatory issues remain outstanding because of not receiving sufficient time for discussion, divergent views amongst member States, and due to a lack of information and inputs to progress negotiations. These findings suggest that member States and prospective contractors should expect negotiations on the adoption of RRPs to continue long into the foreseeable future.