Trump's drive for ocean bed mining threatens law of the sea

And the Canadian deep-sea mining frontrunner The Metals Company has already filed an application in the United States to conduct commercial mining on the high seas -- bypassing the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Ocean law is largely guided by that accord -- the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), first signed in 1982 to prevent "a competitive scramble for sovereign rights over the land underlying the world's seas and oceans," according to Maltese diplomat Arvid Pardo, the convention's forebearer. If the U.S. enjoys the benefits of ocean law, Lathrop argues, "but then you disregard the other part of the package deal -- that the seabed and its minerals in areas beyond national jurisdiction are the common heritage of humankind -- that is going to be destabilizing, to say the least, for the general legal order of the oceans."