Washington’s decision to circumvent ongoing international consultations and unilaterally open international waters to US-backed mining companies surprised fears of the environmentally devastating 21st century gold rush.
Trump’s executive order comes weeks after the UN’s International Undersea Agency (ISA) closed its 30th session in Jamaica. This completed the rulesbook on the safe and sustainable exploitation of mineral resources, thereby extending the global moratorium on subsea mining.
The European Commission told the Euroneus on Monday that it “deeply regrets” ‘bore’ the US president’s executive order.
A spokesman for the EU official said the 1982 treaty “sets out a legal framework in which all ocean and ocean activities must be carried out,” and “reflects a balance that can accommodate the various interests of individual states while protecting the common interests of the international community and the entire Hankind.”
However, the United States never ratified UNCLOS. President Ronald Reagan was skeptical at the time of his founding and signed a treaty that has since joined the majority of countries (now 168 and the EU, and is consistently blocked by minority lawmakers of the US Senate.”
However, EU officials appear to share the widely held view that the treaty has come to represent fundamental international law built on decades of accepted norms and practices, and therefore applies to the United States through legal treaties.
“It is important to remember that the provisions reflect customary international law and therefore they are binding on all states, regardless of whether they have joined the treaty or not,” an EU official said in an email.
“By establishing a marine and sea legal order, the treaty will contribute to sustainable development and peace, security, cooperation and friendship among all countries,” the committee said.
The world’s first pirate mining operation
Douglas McAuley, a UC Santa Barbara professor and adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said Trump’s move was not only illegal, but was destined to backfire.
“The US has made progress to become the first pirate mining operation in international waters,” McAuley said. “With the rules, we could have controlled the minerals that China, countries or people take from this part of the ocean,” the marine biologist said.
Duncan Curry, a legal and policy advisor to the US-based Deep Sea Conservation Union, said the unilateral move by Washington was a clear violation of international law.
“It overturns more than 40 years of legal precedent in the United Nations Law Convention on the Sea, threatens to destabilize maritime governance worldwide, and disgraces the Pacific people and countries that this move has the most impact.”
China has taken the same line, and Guo Zi-Kung, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters the day after it was signed, “The exploration and exploitation of minerals in the international submarine region must take place under the framework of the United Nations Law Convention on the Sea and the international submarine authorities.”
Customary international law
Trump’s order may mark a surge in global tensions in dividing the rest of the Global Commons, but that wasn’t the beginning.
Under the Biden administration, the United States concluded a two-year oceanographic research project (claimed as the largest ever) to portray almost one million square kilometers of the “expanded continental shelf” area, beyond the exclusive 200 aviation miles that claims its sole right to mineral resources.
The US claims about the region, wagered in December 2023 and indirectly referred to by Trump in his executive order, are based in principle on the complex standards set forth in UNCLOS and “conventional international law” that the president is currently accused of trying to avoid.
Despite China cites the legal treaty in its criticism of Trump’s executive order, along with Russia and others, it has previously questioned America’s claims on the expanded continental shelf on the ground that Washington never ratified UNCLOS.
Beijing’s influence within the ISA, and Washington’s shortage without it, is just one of the reasons why the latest (failed) bipartisan efforts have persuaded Congress to ratify.
