Review of Mining Rates, Environmental Impacts, Metal Values, and Investments for Polymetallic Nodule Mining

Whose benefit? A comparative perspective for the ISA

“…Worse yet, the current discussion has been dominated by industrial interests and concerns, along with those of competing land-based suppliers (and their state sponsors), albeit tempered by a rising chorus of environmental concerns [17][18][19]. There is remarkably little academic work that directly addresses the challenges of economic management (but see [20]), even though some of the States Parties groups at the ISA have begun to voice concerns [7,21].…”

“…Policy is always the result of political consensus-building and compromise, and there are significant institutional and political constraints, the result of longstanding diplomatic negotiations, which limit the range of possibilities available. The 1994 Implementation Agreement is particularly important in this regard, 17 as the resulting compromise secured ratification and brought UNCLOS into force. This Agreement removed some of the most controversial elements in the 1982 Convention (e.g., the requirement for compulsory transfer of technology and subsidizing the Enterprise), and introduced a more market-friendly approach with the hope of providing a more stable investment environment, while encouraging contract terms that should be fair to both the seabed mining sector and the international community [10, p.2].…”

“…It was named after Dutch experiences from discovering natural gas in the 1950s. 17 For example, the 1994 Agreement provided an effective veto to industrialized states, in that any three states in either four-member chamber (in the Council) can block substantial decisions for which consensus is not required. See [38, p. 690].…”