Slim hope of progress at sea law conference

Press, 7 August 1978, Page 16

Slim hope of progress at sea law conference

By

PAT BURNS in Geneva

With the United Nations Law o the Sea Conference, the spiritual guardian of some 70 per cent of the world’s surface, approaching its fifth birthday, delegates from 150 countries are preparing for another “make-or-break” sessio . They are to gather in New ■York from August 21 to September 15 for the seventh session since the first was held in New York, in 1973. Thev hope to make more progress than that a< ved in Geneva earlier this year. Then, in March, April’ and May, they failed after seven weeks to achieve the object they had set: a revised negotiating text. There is a growing beliefthat if the next session of le conference does not arrive at hard and fast decisions acceptable to at least a reasonable consensus of opinion, then five wasted years will be the result, individual nations and groupings in the conference will then be prepared to go their own ways. S..pporters of this view point to the go-i*-alone attitude taken by coastal States in setting up Exclusive Economic Zones extending up to 200 miles out to sea, moves which have been described by the fisheries committee of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation as “a revolution in world fishing,” As

the Portuguese chairman of that committee put it: “For the developing countries it also represents a big step towards setting up a new international economic order.” Many developing countries including landlocked States which w’ere particularly aggrieved at their exclusion from any of the benefits of the riches of the sea — expected that a Law of the Sea would play a considerable part in setting up the new world economic order they seek. Failure so far to reach agreement on many of the key issues — such as deep sea-bed mining, continental shelf definition, and delineation of maritime boundaries — has considerably blunted those early hopes. For the developed nations, tuo, the need for progress is urgent, particularly with regard to the exploitation of -he vast mineral wealth on the sea-bed. Scientists have established that billions of tons of so-called manganese nodules — rich in manganese. cobalt, nickel and capper — are to be found o-i the sea-beds, particularly in the north-eastern Pacific (off North America) and in the southern Indian and Atlantic Oceans.

Not only do the amounts of minerals on the sea-bed add up to enough to meet worH demand for possibly

thousands of years (at the present rate of consumption), but there is also evidence that the’ are perpetually being created. The developed nations are keen ti start exploiting this wealth, and have the technology (mostly in the United States) to do so. The mining giants in the United States and elswwhere are becoming impatient with the lack of progress on this topic at the conference, a <1 have been puttting pressure on the United States delegation. The fear is that the United States Government will give in to lobbying and give the go-ahead for mining, regardless of the conference. Since mo o» the nodules are under the high seas, they are legally free to anyone able to pluck them from the sea-bed, and the conference must decide how to share out the benefits. Developing countries are anxious that mining firms, and the developed world generally, should not scoop the pool. Some mineral producers are concerned that their own land-based mining industries, the pillars of their economies, could be wiped out by a flood of “sea gold.” At its Geneva session, the conference failed to agree on issues such as how the Sealed Authority, which it planned to set up, can be sure of access to deep-sea mining technology and how to plan for a review of the initial sea-bed mining system in 20 years time, the conference agreed that these questions should be passed to the New York meeting. Other issues on which agreement was not reached, and which forward to New York, include: sea-bed finances (what kind of “royalty” payments mining companies might have to pay to the authority); membership of the Sea-Bed Council (a planned policy-making body); fishing rights for land-locked States and others; the continental shelf (a legal definition of this remains out of reach); maritime boundaries; and marine pollution. These are the “hard-core” issues which the conference has selected as essential m any agreement on a convention. There was some progress made at Geneva by the 1400 or so delegates. There was a measure of agreement on rules to strengthen the powers of coastal States to guard against pollution, and consensus was reached on procedures for the settlement of economic zone disputes involving fisheries. Copyright: World Feature Services, Ltd, 1978.