Legal Aspects of the Recovery of Areas Degraded by Mining in the International Seabed

This book offers an innovative approach to the recovery of areas degraded by international seabed mining, one that considers the feasibility of a standard that would allow mining in these areas in apparent antinomy with their other potential present and future uses.

The book begins by identifying and explaining the legal norms that allow mining in these areas and the rights and obligations in mining exploitation concomitant to other uses of them, based on an analysis of mining operations’ duty of Recovery of Degraded Areas. It reveals an antinomy in international law, namely the compatibility of degraded areas and their various present and future uses with the mining of the international seabed.

The freedom to mine these areas could destroy the least impacted biome on the planet and undermine the international law system represented by the Cultural Heritage of Mankind and the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS III”). Recovery of Degraded Areas is an obligation in mining and, as such, requires structural changes in the reading of UNCLOS III; recognizing international roles other than those related to sovereignty; projecting the law into the future; and rereading it in light of international environmental law and its instruments.