Legal Developments
The promise of nodule exploitation was one of the main factors that led developing nations to propose that the deep seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction should be treated as a “common heritage of mankind”, with proceeds to be shared between those who developed this resource and the rest of the international community. This initiative eventually resulted in the adoption (1982) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the establishment (1994) of the International Seabed Authority, with responsibility for controlling all deep-sea mining in international areas. The first legislative achievement of this intergovernmental organization was the adoption (2000) of regulations for prospecting and exploration for polymetallic nodules, with special provisions to protect the marine environment from any adverse effects. The Authority followed this up (2001-2002) by signing 15-year contracts with seven private and public entities, giving them exclusive rights to explore for nodules in specified tracts of the seabed, each 75,000 square kilometers in size. The United States, whose companies were among the key actors in the earlier period of exploration, remains outside this compact as a non-party to the Law of the Sea Convention.
Kennecott Copper had explored the potential profits in manganese nodule mining and found that it was not worth the cost. Other than the environmental issues and the fact that the profits had to be shared, there was no cheap way to get the manganese nodules off the sea floor.
In the meantime, interest in the extraction of nodules had waned. Three factors were largely responsible:
- Difficulty and expense of developing and operating mining technology that could economically remove the nodules from depths of five or six kilometers and transport them to the ocean surface
- High taxes the international community would charge for the mining, and
- Continuing availability of the key minerals from land-based sources at market prices.
The commercial extraction of polymetallic nodules is not considered likely to occur during the next two decades.
Read more about this topic: Manganese Nodule
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