SEABED AUTHORITY MEETS TO COMPLETE WORK ON REGULATIONS FOR POLYMETALLIC NODULE EXPLORATION
Press Release
SEA/1683
SEABED AUTHORITY MEETS TO COMPLETE WORK ON REGULATIONS FOR POLYMETALLIC NODULE EXPLORATION
20000630 Background ReleaseTo Adopt 2001-2002 Budget and Hold Elections to Council at Kingston Session, 3-14 July
(Received from the International Seabed Authority.)
KINGSTON, 30 June -- The International Seabed Authority will meet at its Kingston headquarters in Jamaica for two weeks beginning Monday, 3 July, with the aim of adopting its first piece of seabed legislation, a code regulating prospecting and exploration for polymetallic nodules located deep beneath the ocean surface in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
Completion of that task will enable the Authority to issue its first contracts to seabed investors in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Prospectors have been surveying the ocean depths for deposits of nodules rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper, and trying out machinery and processes that will one day be capable of economically retrieving those minerals.
At this, the second part of its sixth session -- which runs to 14 July -- the Authoritys two legislative bodies, Assembly and Council, will also act on a budget for the next two years and approve a scale of assessments specifying the amount each member State must contribute. In addition, the Assembly is to elect half of the 36-member Council for a four-year term beginning in 2001.
The Assembly, composed of all 133 members of the Authority, will have the opportunity to review the agencys past work and future plans when it examines the annual report of Secretary-General Satya N. Nandan. In this report and in his budget proposals, the Secretary-General describes plans to organize two technical workshops, on seabed data standardization and research cooperation, and to continue improving the secretariats databases on undersea minerals and the technology for recovering them.
The Secretary-Generals budget estimates call for appropriations of $5.1 million for 2001 and $5.4 million for 2002. Next years total is about 1 per cent below the 2000 budget of $5.2 million. No additions are proposed to the Authoritys staff of 37.
The July meetings will wrap up the Authoritys two part session for the current year. The first part, also held at Kingston from 20 to 31 March, concentrated on the priority task of negotiating unresolved issues relating to the regulations for prospecting and exploration for polymetallic nodules in the
- 2 - Press Release SEA/1683 30 June 2000
international seabed area. Substantial progress was recorded on those issues, in the words of Secretary-General Nandan, but members have yet to reach final agreement on clauses covering environmental protection and the handling of resource data gathered by prospectors.
The Authority will also be looking into prospects for other types of deep- ocean resources, on which it has convened a technical workshop this week (26-30 June) in Kingston. Of principal interest are seafloor massive sulphides, concentrated around volcanic hot springs deep below the surface, and cobalt- bearing ferromanganese crusts, precipitated from seawater and lying on ocean ridges in many ocean areas. The Authority has been formally requested to devise regulations for exploring those resources, as its next step in controlling development in the international seabed area.
In those sets of regulations, known as the mining code, the Authority is constructing a detailed legal framework that will enable it to carry out its task of organizing and controlling activities in the international seabed area. That task was assigned to it by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, as refined by the 1994 Agreement relating to the Implementation of Part XI (seabed provisions) of the Convention. The Convention defines the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction as the common heritage of mankind. The Authority is an autonomous international agency established by the Convention and has a relationship agreement with the United Nations.
Polymetallic Nodules
The draft regulations on prospecting and exploration for polymetallic nodules in the international seabed area set out the legal conditions under which States, organizations, private consortia and corporations will obtain exclusive rights to investigate specified seabed areas. According to the Law of the Sea Convention, all such activity must be conducted under contract or licence with the Seabed Authority, which will regulate them through a system of contracts, reporting and inspections. A principal aim of this system is to ensure the protection of the marine environment, both in the areas under contract and in other waters that may be affected, including those of nearby coastal States.
The Authority has already registered seven pioneer investors to which that regime will apply as soon as the Council adopts the regulations and the Authority issues contracts. Those enterprises, some private and others government entities, are sponsored by China, France, Japan, India, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, and an international body organized by five Eastern European States and Cuba.
The regulations spell out financial and technical requirements that contractors must meet for the Authority to offer guarantees of secure tenure and ensure confidentiality of proprietary information. Contractors would be required to establish training programmes for personnel of the Authority and developing countries -- a requirement already fulfilled by the seven pioneer investors. Contractors would be obliged to take steps to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment.
The draft regulations which the Council is examining derive from a text worked out in 1997-1998 by the Authoritys Legal and Technical Commission. The current version (document ISBA/6/C/2), consisting of 40 regulations organized into nine parts and with four annexes, takes account of informal discussions in the Council since then, including an intensive round at the first part of this years session in March. On the Councils recommendation, the Assembly had decided last August to hold a two-part session totaling four weeks in 2000 to enable the Council to complete its work on the text by the end of the year.
Many of the regulations already agreed upon are basically an elaboration of provisions in annex III of the Convention, which contains the basic conditions of prospecting, exploration and exploitation. This year the Council has concentrated on part V, dealing with protection and preservation of the marine environment, and part VI, on confidentiality of data and information.
On environmental protection, much of the debate has centred on whether and how the regulations should incorporate the precautionary principle, which essentially says that lack of data on possible harmful consequences should not serve as an excuse for failing to take preventive measures. Coastal States and others are concerned that dredging and other activities involved in deep seabed mining, and even in preliminary exploration, might cause unpredictable harm to living organisms. Potential miners are of the view that environmental disturbances, at least prior to actual mining, would be minor. The negotiators will seek to reconcile these views into legal language.
The revised text calls for a precautionary approach by which each contractor would be obligated to prevent, reduce and control pollution and other hazards to the marine environment arising from its activities in the Area as far as reasonably possible using the best technology available to it.
On data reporting and handling, the issues revolve around what types of data contractors will have to submit so that the Authority can effectively monitor their activities, who is to determine what is confidential, and how the Authority is to ensure that the contractors data will be kept confidential.
One side stresses the need to ensure the secrecy of information of commercial value, developed or gathered by contractors at their expense. That applies not only to the details of exploratory findings but also to the design of undersea equipment for exploration. The other side stresses the need to balance confidentiality with concern for protecting the marine environment and the common heritage. Those holding that view also want to limit the period during which such material must remain confidential.
Some participants seek to limit the types of information contractors would be required to submit to the Authority in annual reports and at the termination of contracts. They especially want to restrict that to information the Authority needs to carry out its control functions.
The revised text expands the confidentiality clauses from one regulation to two. Confidentiality would apply to material designated by the contractor, in consultation with the Secretary-General, rather than items identified by the contractor. Material necessary for the formulation of environmental regulations, other than equipment design, would not be deemed proprietary. A new paragraph specifies that confidential material may be used by officials of the Authority only as necessary for and relevant to the effective exercise of their powers and functions.
The new text elaborates on the period during which material is to remain confidential. Instead of automatic declassification 10 years after the exploration contract expires, the Secretary-General and the contractor are to review the matter 10 years after the material is submitted or on expiration of the contract, whichever is later, and every 5 years thereafter. Confidentiality would remain if the contractor establishes that its release would entail a substantial risk of serious and unfair economic prejudice. Nothing would be released until the contractor had a reasonable opportunity to exhaust judicial remedies.
On procedures to ensure confidentiality, a new paragraph requires persons authorized to have access to such material to make a written declaration acknowledging their legal obligation not to disclose it and agreeing to comply with confidentiality regulations and procedures. Another new paragraph authorizes action by the Authority against anyone who violates those obligations.
Annex 4 of the draft regulations, which sets out the standard clauses for exploration contracts, has also been altered to specify more precisely the types of information required from contractors in annual reports and at the end of the contract period. For example, contractors need not submit equipment design data. Further, an estimation of mineable areas, including mining conditions and the grade and quantity of reserves, would be required only after the contract expired instead of annually.
At the end of the contract period, contractors would submit copies of geological, environmental, geochemical and geophysical data, and of geological, technical, financial and economic reports, that are necessary for and relevant to the effective exercise of the powers and functions of the Authority in respect of the exploration area -- a qualification new to the text. Contractors would no longer be required to submit a representative portion of nodule samples.
The Council, which has been examining that text in informal and unofficial meetings without records, is expected to devote most of the two-week session to completing that task. The regulations, once adopted by the Council, will be applied provisionally pending final adoption by the Assembly.
Meanwhile, the 22-member Legal and Technical Commission will meet during the first week of the session to continue work on draft guidelines for assessing the possible environmental impacts arising from nodule exploration, a task which it began last August.
Other Seabed Minerals and Activities
When the Law of the Sea Convention was being written, polymetallic nodules (or manganese nodules as they were usually called then) were the only known mineral resources on the deep ocean bed. But in 1984, undersea explorers in the South Pacific discovered the first known hydrothermal vents and associated polymetallic sulphide deposits, rich in zinc, copper, iron, silver and gold. Since then, similar areas have been located offshore from a number of countries, including Fiji, Iceland, Japan, Papua New Guinea and Tonga.
Unlike nodules, which consist of minerals naturally precipitated from seawater, these sulphides are precipitated when molten rock, welling up in hot springs from deep in the earths crust, comes in contact with cold seawater. Such undersea hot springs are located in earthquake and volcanic zones beneath the oceans, where the seafloor is spreading apart as a consequence of movements of the earths tectonic plates. Besides the well-known earthquake-generating region
along the East Asian rim, such areas are also found along the mid-Atlantic ridge and elsewhere.
Another potential source of mineral reserves discovered fairly recently is cobalt-rich crusts, or cobalt-bearing ferromanganese crusts, also containing nickel and platinum. Like polymetallic nodules, these are formed by natural precipitation of seawater, but are usually found along seafloor ridges rather than in basins.
In 1998 the Russian Federation formally asked the Authority to develop regulations for exploring those two types of potential resources. Under the Law of the Sea Convention, the Authority is supposed to develop such regulations within three years after such a request.
To further work in that area, the Authority has convened this week in Kingston a workshop on seabed resources other than polymetallic nodules. Its objectives are to gather information on their occurrence and their possibilities as sources of extractable minerals, to identify institutional factors that have contributed to discovery and research, and to provide information that will help the secretariat, and later the Legal and Technical Commission and the Council, in drafting regulations. While the emphasis will be on these two resources, the workshop will also review activities relating to undersea methane hydrates, oil and gas, marine phosphorites and deposits of precious metals such as diamonds.
Other plans for the Authoritys future work are cited in the Secretary- Generals annual report (ISBA/A/6/9). Two workshops are planned: on the development of a standardized system of data interpretation (2001) and on the development of a model programme for international cooperation and collaboration in marine scientific research related to the seabed (2002).
In addition, the secretariat plans to establish a central repository of data covering all deep seabed minerals, including quantitative resource assessments. Existing repositories are spread throughout the world and not always readily accessible, and there is no uniform format for the data. The Authority will also improve its environmental database, starting with information on the basic biology of the deep ocean in the Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone of the north-east Pacific and the central Indian Ocean basin, regions where pioneer investors have reserved areas for polymetallic nodule exploration.
Finances
The Secretary-General has proposed a budget of $5,147,600 for 2001 and $5,358,800 for 2002 (ISBA/6/A/7-ISBA/6/C/4). Next years total is about 1 per cent below the approved budget of $5,175,200 for the current year. The reduction is mainly due to lower conference-servicing costs if the Authority holds a two-week session next year compared to the two-part, four weeks of meetings in 2000.
The administrative and operational share of the budget is estimated at $4,397,600 for next year and $4,531,800 for the year after, while conference servicing would amount to $750,000 and $827,000, respectively. The Secretary- General has budgeted for a three-week session in 2002, when the Authority will have to consider a two-year work programme and deal with regulations for polymetallic sulphides.
Personnel costs make up the bulk of the operational budget, $3.5 million the first year rising to $3.6 million in the second. The establishment would remain at 37 posts, with the increase due to inflation and the expectation that existing vacancies will be filled.
This is the first time that the Authority will approve a two-year budget, in accordance with financial regulations approved in March. Although the biennial budget period conforms to practice throughout the United Nations system, appropriations will still have to be voted annually, in accordance with the Law of the Sea Convention. The budget will be examined by the 15-member Finance Committee and the Council before final approval by the Assembly.
In his annual report, the Secretary-General discloses that 35 members have contributed $2.1 million, or 41 per cent of the 2000 budget, as at 31 May. For 1999, 73 members have contributed $4.8 million, or 96 per cent. Forty-six members were in arrears for 1998, amounting to 27 per cent of the budget. At the end of May, 40 members were in arrears for more than two years, which will result in the loss of their voting rights if they do not pay up.
In addition to the budget, the Assembly is to approve a scale of assessments specifying the percentage each of the 133 members will contribute to the next two budgets. The scale conforms to that set by the United Nations, with adjustments to account for differences in membership.
Elections to Council
The Assembly is to elect half the membership of the 36-member Council for a four-year term, 2001-04, to replace States whose current term expires at the end of this year. This is a regular election, held every two years as terms expire on a rotating basis.
The Law of the Sea Convention identifies five groups of States from which Council membership is to be drawn, of which four are States with special interests in aspects of seabed mining and the fifth is a group chosen to ensure equitable geographical balance in the Council as a whole. Members may be re-elected from the same or different groups. During past elections, several understandings were placed on record, according to which certain members would relinquish their seats to others before their terms expired. The current status of Council membership, including these understandings, is as follows:
Group A (4 States from among the largest consumers or net importers of minerals to be derived from seabed mining): The term of Japan and the United Kingdom expires at the end of 2000. Italy and the Russian Federation will remain through 2002, except that Italy was elected last August on the understanding that it will relinquish its seat if the United States joins the Authority (by acceding to the Law of the Sea Convention).
Group B (4 States from those with the largest investment in seabed mining): The term of China and France expires at the end of this year. According to a 1996 arrangement, India is to be elected to a four-year term in this group beginning in 2001. Germany and the Netherlands will remain through 2002.
Group C (4 States that are major land-based net exporters of minerals found on the deep seabed): The term of Gabon expires at the end of this year. Poland will also leave, its seat to be open to any other State from Group C, on the basis that Poland would serve for a further two years between 2001 and 2006. Australia and Indonesia are to remain through 2002, with the proviso, in respect to Australia, that Group C members will consult further if Canada joins the Authority. In line with earlier understandings, Chile will also remain through 2002 but will switch from Group C to E, while Indonesia will replace it in Group C through 2002; and South Africa will replace Gabon in 2001-2002, but relinquish its seat to Zambia in 2003 and Gabon in 2004.
Group D (6 developing States representing special interests, including those with large populations, the land-locked or geographically disadvantaged, islands, major mineral importers or potential producers, and the least developed): The term of Brazil, Oman and Sudan expires at the end of 2000, and Egypt is to relinquish its seat at that time. Fiji and Jamaica will remain through 2002.
Group E (18 States reflecting the principle of geographical distribution, as well as a balance between developed and developing States): The term of Argentina, Indonesia, Kenya, Malta, Namibia, Philippines, Senegal, Trinidad and Tobago, and Ukraine expires at the end of this year. Belgium and Costa Rica will also leave, on the understanding that Belgiums replacement through 2002 would be determined by the Western European and Others Group, while Chile is to replace Costa Rica through 2002, in accordance with a 1998 agreement. Cameroon, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia will remain through 2002.
At the first election in 1996, the Assembly agreed to allocate 10 seats to the African Group, 9 to the Asian Group, 8 to the Western European and Others Group, 7 to the Latin American and Caribbean Group, and 3 to the Eastern European Group. As that came to 37 seats, or one more than the total membership, it was agreed that all but the Eastern European Group would relinquish one seat in successive years.
Other Matters
The Council is to review two draft rules of procedure for the Legal and Technical Commission, left in abeyance when the rest of the rules were adopted last August. They concern special circumstances when States may attend meetings of that body of experts, which normally meets in closed session.
The Council is also being asked to approve Staff Regulations govening the conduct and entitlements of the Authoritys personnel. The draft has been revised to take account of substantial changes made in 1998 in the United Nations Staff Regulations.
The President of the Assembly this year is Liesbeth Lijnzaad (Netherlands) and the Council President is Sakiusa A. Rabuka (Fiji). Both were elected in March.
Members of Authority
All parties to the Law of the Sea Convention are automatically members of the Authority. The current membership totals 133, up from 132 at the March session. The newest party to the Convention is Nicaragua. The list of members is as follows:
Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chile, China, Comoros, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote dIvoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, European Community, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Mozambique, Myanmar.
Also Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Viet Nam, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Note: The main documents of the forthcoming session may be obtained from the International Seabed Authoritys website, www.isa.org.jm.
* *** *