Deep sea-bed resources: a major challenge

Abstract

There is no novelty in the idea that technology presents a continuing challenge to Society in terms of the decisions which must be taken over the use and control of new developments and, indirectly, to the legal system which must acquire and apply the techniques of control desired by Society. However, there is novelty in the sheer pace at which technology is presenting this challenge to international society in relation to the exploitation of the resources of the sea. Within little more than a decade after the great U.N. Geneva Conferences on the Law of the Sea of 1958 and 1960—which introduced substantial codification—a general demand for revision of the law has led to plans for a new Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1973. The scope of the proposed conference is extremely wide and it is the purpose of this article to examine only one of the proposed topics, namely, the “international sea-bed area.” This is a topic which is currently exciting interest throughout the world, in Parliaments, Foreign Offices, Universities, learned societies, conferences, oil companies and even the popular press (the order does not indicate a hierarchy of influence). Behind this interest there lies, of course, money and—possibly a countervailing pressure—the increasing concern with the protection of the maritime environment in addition to the normal considerations of prestige, military security and national interest which condition any State's approach to questions of maritime jurisdiction. In order to appreciate the extent of this interest some brief mention should be made of the resources currently estimated to lie in or on the sea-bed outside national jurisdiction.