7 November 2020 | New Scientist | 43Jon Copley is Associate Professor
in Ocean Exploration and Public
Engagement at the University
of Southampton, UK“No exploitation licences have been
issued yet, so effectively deep-sea mining
is banned until such time that we’ve worked
out if it can be done environmentally,
economically and legally,” says Glover.
Even if the ISA agrees the regulations for
exploitation licences in the coming months,
would-be miners then have to submit their
licence applications for approval, which will
include consideration of environmental
impacts in each case.
Because deep-sea mining hasn’t yet begun,
the ISA also has time to consider how the
benefits could be shared with the world’s
lower-income nations. One idea is to create
a sovereign wealth fund for the ocean, using
income from mining areas that each licensee
has to release back to the ISA for its “common
heritage” goal. “You could use it either to
support underfunded global public goods,
which could, for example, be marine
scientific research,” says Lodge. “Or you could
use it to combat global public bads – climate
change, for example, by putting it into a
climate change adaptation fund.”This would only apply to profits from
non-living resources, though: organisms in
the Area aren’t covered by the ISA. As well as
fisheries, governed by regional organisations,
these also include “marine genetic
resources” – the gene pool of the oceans,
which has huge potential for biotech and
medical applications. This genetic resource
is unregulated, but that is set to change. Next
year – following a postponement because of
coronavirus – the UN is convening the final
session of an intergovernmental conference
that began in 2018 to draw up a new treaty for
biodiversity in the high seas.Creatures of the deep
Unlike deep-sea mining, exploiting marine
genetic resources doesn’t involve large-scale
harvesting: a single specimen of an organism
can provide a genome for that species. So,
sharing any benefits will depend on tracking
biological samples and data collected from
the high seas. “What you don’t want is
something that’s going to end up hamperingresearch,” says Muriel Rabone at the
NHM, who has attended the preliminary
negotiations. But, she adds, tracking could
also help other researchers to continue using
collections of deep-sea specimens to answer
new questions in the future.
Decades after it was proposed, the
principle of common heritage could soon
start to pay dividends. While that would be
progressive, some scientists think the idea
of the high seas as a resource to be exploited
is outdated. “The Law of the Sea Convention
was drafted in the 80s, on the back of
negotiations that took place in the 60s
and 70s,” says Harriet Harden-Davies at
the University of Wollongong, Australia.
“Looking to the future, I think it’s useful to
draw some ideas from fresh inspirations.”
In recent years, environmental legislation
in some countries and US states has
recognised that nature itself has rights:
a few countries, such as New Zealand and
India, have gone further and recognised
rights for specific ecosystems such as rivers
and mountains, making them legal entities
akin to corporations or people. In June,
Harden-Davies and her colleagues published
a paper showing how this rights-of-nature
paradigm could be used in developing a new
treaty for ocean biodiversity.
“These laws wouldn’t preclude use of
ocean resources, but they would really
reinforce the principle of precaution,” says
Harden-Davies. They would also ensure that
some benefits of exploitation flow back into
ocean conservation. “And you could have
some kind of institutional mechanism, like
a Council of Ocean Custodians, that would
provide an opportunity for people to speak
on behalf of the ocean,” she says. In other
words, instead of debating our rights to
the oceans, the focus would be on our
responsibilities. ❚In 2007, Russia
planted a flag on
the seabed at the
North PoleRE
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