UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy

Deep sea mining (DSM) is an increasingly controversial yet seemingly inevitable next step in humankind’s collective march toward a greener future. Advocates for DSM insist that the bounties of the ocean floor will help us mitigate the harms of climate change. Critics caution that a strong profit motive has made us careless and that the seemingly inconsequential damages apparent to DSM threaten even greater second-order consequences, not least of which is the elimination of various marine ecosystems. Beyond environmental risks, there exist major ethical concerns about the global distribution of licenses to harvest these underwater metals given that they are overwhelmingly located in international waters. Should mineral rights be distributed in accordance with some objective scheme for the benefit of all humanity, or is the seafloor to become the new “Wild West” where private interests reap all rewards? What of oft-overlooked Indigenous Peoples whose ancestral practices are more threatened by the harms of unfettered sea mineral exploitation? This Comment advances the position that the International Seabed Authority (ISA) has failed to adequately acknowledge the myriad complexities of DSM and advocates plausible legal reform which better addresses these issues in the future.