Digvijay Rewatkar, Deep Seabed Mining Technology

As states pursue net-zero emissions by mid-century, transforming energy systems and mobility is essential. This ‘Green Transition’ demands large-scale deployment of clean energy technologies and infrastructure, which requires expanding mining and mineral processing. Oceans, covering 71% of the Earth’s surface, are now seen as a new frontier for sourcing these minerals. These resources are considered strategic due to their role in clean technologies, sustainable products, and supply disruption. Consequently, the European Union, the US, India, Japan, and Australia have prioritized mineral supply security. As land-based deposits decline in quality and quantity, focus has shifted to the sea-raising environmental concerns, as the marine environment already faces over-exploitation, pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Harnessing ocean resources requires sustainable, balanced approaches. Technological advances are essential, particularly due to the expiration of the two-year deadline for the mining code. Once this expires, the ISA must consider any seabed mining plans. Given the complexity of seabed mining, assessing whether seabed technologies meet sustainability goals is vital. This chapter examines the governance framework, including precautionary practices, and examines the role of states and contractors. It also maps the technological and environmental readiness and highlights adaptive management to reduce uncertainty and avoid costly mitigation.

When the conference delegates turned their attention to seabed mining, many proclaimed the great importance of the issue – from either a positive or negative perspective – declaring that it would underwrite a new international economic order, or present a fundamental threat to land-based mining industries, or exemplify the virtues of the free market. The problem was that no state knew how profitable seabed exploitation might be, or the technological challenges involved, or its potential effect on commodities markets. Because of this uncertainty, none of them wanted to put themselves at a potential disadvantage or forego future rewards, so the negotiations were particularly hard fought and protracted. One casualty would be the common heritage concept, replaced with the parallel system by the G5 powers, and with technology transfer by the G77 countries. Another casualty was the cooperation between the industrial powers, with some proposing anti-monopoly clauses and production quotas to protect their own mining concerns and constrain competitors. The outcome managed to displease every state, but most eventually signed the convention with the agreed seabed provisions in 1982.

Chapter 6 is the conclusion of the book. It provides a brief account of the post-independence trajectory of the republic, focusing on the outcomes of the ‘Certain Phosphate Lands Case’ in the International Court of Justice 1992, and the impact of Australia’s offshore detention regime on the rule of law in Nauru in the 2010s. The chapter argues that the now notorious ‘failures’ of the republic identified by the Constitutional Review Committee in 2007 – ‘failure of institutions’; ‘lack of motivation or incentive to preserve wealth for the future, and account for its management’; ‘absence of machinery for enforcing accountability and transparency’; ‘failure of leaders to learn the lessons of good governance’ – must be understood as fundamentally continuous with imperial administrative practices of the pre-independence era, and not as originating with the Nauruan community itself following independence. Noting the reassertion of new forms of imperial intervention in Nauru, the chapter concludes that questions of decolonisation remain as urgent today as they were in 1968.