"The International Seabed Authority had until this weekend to finish drafting exploitation regulations for deep-sea mining. They’re not done. So now what happens?"
"Two years ago, the Republic of Nauru, a small island nation in the South Pacific, put the world on course for the beginning of a new industry: deep-sea mining in international waters. Nauru triggered a clause forcing the International Seabed Authority (ISA)—the body that governs the seabed in international waters—to finalize the Mining Code, the rules that will dictate where and how countries and companies can mine the deep sea. That two-year timeline runs out this weekend, on July 9. Despite the looming deadline, the ISA is far from finishing its task.
“I don’t see any chance that the regulations will be ready for adoption in July,” says Pradeep Singh, an expert on the law of the sea at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, Germany.
The tight deadline and slow development of the Mining Code’s exploitation regulations have put the world in a potentially tricky bind. Once the two-year deadline passes, the ISA is on the hook to consider mining bids under whatever existing draft regulations it has in place."
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