Revisiting the “Responsibility to Ensure”: Two-Line Standards of the Sponsoring State’s National Legislation on Deep Seabed Mining

Xiangxin Xu, Minghao Li and Guifang Xue ()
Additional contact information
Xiangxin Xu: Center for Polar and Deep Ocean Development, KoGuan School of Law, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), Shanghai 200030, China
Minghao Li: Center for Polar and Deep Ocean Development, KoGuan School of Law, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), Shanghai 200030, China
Guifang Xue: Center for Polar and Deep Ocean Development, KoGuan School of Law, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), Shanghai 200030, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-11

Abstract: The deep seabed mining regime is composed of international legislation and domestic counterparts. International legislation emanates from the International Seabed Authority (ISA) under the mandate of UNCLOS, which is currently in the accelerated process of being drafted for exploitation activities to meet a deadline of July 2023. In contrast, the development of domestic law in ISA Member States has been relatively slow, and this risks failure to fulfill their obligation of “responsibility to ensure” concluded in the advisory opinion in 2011. This possible failure is partly due to States’ different understanding of their obligation to impose more stringent environmental conditions on contractors in their domestic laws than those specified in the Mining Code adopted by ISA. This paper argues that Annex III, article 21(3) of the UNCLOS requires States to adopt a two-tier approach in their national legislation—minimal and optimal levels. The minimal level requires a sponsoring State to comply with the Mining Code’s fundamental requirements while reaching the optimal level means that the sponsoring State tries its best to establish more stringent standards than the Mining Code. Adopting more stringent requirements may be realized by adopting higher or stricter standards or inserting more details in the national legislation. Moreover, all ISA Member States are, including developing States, obliged to meet the minimum line and encouraged to move towards the optimal one

Keywords: deep seabed mining; responsibility to ensure; sponsoring State; national legislation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/10/8095/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/10/8095/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:10:p:8095-:d:1148237

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().