Dividing Up the Deep

...Such legislation would clearly damage, if not wreck, the prospect of international accord over the development of deep sea resources...

...GLOBAL POPULISM' It is time we face up to the fundamental incompatibility between the nation-state system and the achievement of world order...

...Probably no country is more interested in the outcome of the Caracas conference than Canada, the nation with the largest continental shelf...

...It's now clear that it won't be...

...The raw materials from these international areas of the seabed would find their markets without interference by regionally based political interests, such as is found in the case of the current Middle East "oil weapon...

...However, the Law is beginning to change...

...These nodules are thought to be caused by seabed chemical reactions and are increasing at a rate faster than man could gather them...

...This is the Nixon-Kissinger-Brezhnev design for new world order...

...The North Sea oil phenomenon caught the British government unawares...

...As the growing imbalance of wealth among nations creates the greatest threat to the security of the whole of mankind, no responsible government can indulge at the Conference in the self-seeking policies of an isolated nation—if it hopes to retain a margin of safety in a worldwide struggle over resources...

...The developing countries, of course, lack the technology to attempt such exploitation...

...It is imperative that they take the latter course...

...The international friction generated by unilateral extensions of exclusive fishing limits is illustrated by shots that were fired during 1973 between NATO allies in Icelandic waters...

...But it will be superseded...

...Special funds might also be financed from these seabed resources to deal with international catastrophes such as the drought now affecting North Africa...

...The danger is that the principle of paramount importance agreed upon by the U.N...

...Unless an acceptable international regime can be established," commented The Times of London, "competition for these [marine] resources can hardly do other than breed conflict...

...The nodules, explains a specialist, vary in size from pebbles to boulders and "contain about thirty metals, including copper, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and iron...

...It sustains the rich and powerful, while it exploits and pacifies the poor and weak . . . The diabolical brilliance of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy is to transform nation-statism while preserving its worst moral defects without eliminating its ecological vulnerability...

...specialists assume that this level of expenditure will more than double within the next two years when mineral exploitation of the oceans will become a big business...

...To rest the prospect for global reform upon the capacity for wisdom and enlightenment of major governments is like telling a zebra that he need not fear the lion if he gets rid of his stripes...

...Or they could generously support the establishment of a vast and profitable international regime, losing nothing that they now own...

...More than a dozen nations claim 200 miles...

...The United Nations Conference on Trade and DeThomas Land is London correspondent for The Financial Post of Canada and is a frequent contributor to the New Scientist of London...

...But their priorities, in such a unified world, would be upon organizing an efficient world economy, one mindless of ecological considerations and insensitive to the needs of human development...

...At least three giant corporations, including Summa, Inc., an umbrella company for Hughes, are already deeply involved...

...Two previous international conferences broke down over this issue of expanding territorial waters, which brings into question the right of navigation through eighty-three key straits around the globe...

...Congress and the State Department are both under intense pressure from the oceanic mining companies to speed up negotiations for an international agreement...

...A compromise between their conflicting interests will determine the size and profitability of the marine regions that will remain to be controlled by some international authority...

...RICHARD A. FALK (Richard A. Falk, Milbank professor of international law and practice at Princeton University, delivered these remarks at the Pacem in Terris III conference in Washington, D.C...

...The operation is carried out in great secrecy and with good reason, for the mineral nodules sucked up from the deep seabed are international property representing immense potential wealth...

...Such forbearance would reduce the greatest source of friction facing mankind—the quest for resources...

...Second, there is unification by economic global-ism under the auspices of the multinational corporations...

...More than $300 million has already been invested by governments, private companies, and scientific institutions in marine mining technology...

...There are three potent movements under way, each of which is globalist in character...

...If the richest countries, which usually happen to have the longest coastlines, choose to grab all they can, they will lay claim to vast areas of the seas for the development of their energy, protein, and mineral resources...

...The odds are in favor of the eventual implementation of a projected international regime for the deep seabed under the authority of some U.N...

...Global reform is too important to be left to governments...

...Nations have begun to think only recently of an international regime for the area of the seabed beyond national jurisdiction...

...Already, the three-mile limit for territorial waters (traditionally measured by the length of a fair cannon shot) has been extended to twelve by scores of countries, including Canada, which claims a 100-mile limit in the Arctic waters for pollution control...

...and all American seabed mining operations currently proceeding without international authority could lead to the same result...

...It has already increased military aerial surveillance of foreign fishing fleets off its coasts...

...This, indeed, is the major issue facing the Law of the Sea Conference which representatives of 148 nations will attend...

...Knowledge is imperfect in this field, but it is plain enough that the planet's capacity to sustain life in its present abundance depends on the proper functioning of the marine environment, and that the immensity of the oceans does not render them proof against ecological ruination by man's industrial activity...

...It is in the copper and nickel that investors are mainly interested...

...The chairman of the House Oceanography Committee, Representative Thomas N. Downing of Virginia, has given his support to a bill that would allow U.S...

...agency :—perhaps the London-based Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization—which would issue licenses for exploitation...

...The world's best fishing grounds near the coastlines are harvested with increasing efficiency by long-range fleets...

...However, it introduces, at last, the understanding that the deep seas should be used for the benefit of all countries...

...The Law of the Sea Conference at Caracas presents two choices to the wealthy coastal countries...

...Wild national claims and counterclaims have been put forward with an eye to the bargaining table at Caracas...

...Self-interested internationalism in the liberal tradition, however intelligently phrased and humanistically conceived, is at best a fig leaf, and at worst an opiate...

...The very concept of the continental shelf also needs defining...

...His political reports are also published by The Observer News Service and Forum World Features...

...DIVIDING UP THE DEEP THOMAS LAND Somewhere in the Pacific, the world's most advanced marine mining vessel, Glorriar Explorer, owned by the elusive billionaire Howard Hughes, is believed to be lifting thousands of tons of manganese, nickel, and copper daily from the ocean floor...

...Canada, with the longest coastline, has served notice of its intention of extending national control over the rich Northwest Atlantic fishing grounds, making the country "the major fishing power on the continental shelf...

...The oceans, five-sevenths of the surface area of the globe, could be the next in sequence...

...velopment (UNCTAD) has already warned that uncontrolled marine mining operations could lead to the economic collapse of the mineral-producing developing countries (such as Zambia and Zaire) and cause serious economic upheavals even in such mineral-rich developed countries as Canada and Australia...

...Similar moves may well be forthcoming from many other nations as governments harden their attitudes for the Caracas bargaining...

...The last compromise definition drew the line of the shelf's limits at a depth of 200 meters or the end of "exploitability," a criterion rapidly extending with technological development...

...Landlocked states and those with short coastlines favor a brief margin...

...First, unification by neo-Darwinian tactics and outlook under the auspices of the great powers and sustained without much formal machinery by spheres of influence in consultation...

...The immediate issue at Caracas is not the depletion of the resources of the seabed but their orderly development...

...But here a distinction must be made between nations and the multi-million-dollar corporations eager to work something out with countries, developed or developing...

...we have machinery neither for planning, nor for research, nor for administration," and there is no likelihood of the emergence of a comprehensive planning approach to replace piecemeal attention paid to individual sea-use problems...

...In any event it doesn't help Americans grasp the most critical foreign policy and world order choices that confront us at this juncture in our national history...

...There have been pressures to postpone the Law of the Sea Conference altogether...

...Industry is concerned with the race in underwater technology, even though the United States has a considerable lead over all other contenders...

...Copyright © 1974 by Thomas Land...

...The global market becomes the basic organizing principle, multinational corporate sales and profits the main goals...

...The United Nations Law of the Sea Conference, which is to begin its next sessions at Caracas, Venezuela, this month, will seek a legal framework for the development of the yet unassessable economic resources of the oceans and establish an authority to deal with marine pirates...

...For the issues of conflict are immense, grouping nations with long coastlines against those with none, setting long-range fishing interests against home-based industries, and pitting the technologically sophisticated countries against the developing world dependent for survival on imported skills and capital...

...Across the Atlantic, "there is still no sign that the British government is even thinking of tackling" the problems associated with sea-use planning comparable to land-use planning, according to an authoritative Fabian research pamphlet...

...The Law of the Sea," explains one Canadian official, "has for centuries reflected the common interest in freedom of navigation...

...This still leaves plenty of room for argument over the width of a country's coastal seas and the depths where the nationally managed continental shelf comes to an end...

...As the dream of deep sea mining becomes a technological reality, an international agreement is urgently needed for a workable political and commercial framework for marine development with maximum efficiency and profits...

...Apart from the mineral nodules, most of the valuable seabed resources are located fairly near the coastlines...

...General Assembly without a dissenting vote, holds that "no state or person . . . shall claim, exercise, or acquire rights with respect to the area or its resources incompatible with the international regime to be established" over the seabed, and that "every state shall have the responsibility to ensure that activities in the area . . . shall be carried out in conformity with the international regime to be established...

...Countries with long coastlines seek a wide margin for national exploitation rights...

...It has already been altered by state practice and it will be transformed further by a successful conference...

...Whether these corporate actors will form a coalition of principal governments is unclear...

...History furnishes examples of the conflicts engendered by economic exploitation, first of the Americas, then of the Indian subcontinent, then of Africa...

...But if they act with wisdom and restraint, they can now develop, instead, a rare and precious chance for a marginal redistribution of international wealth in favor of the desperately poor countries without surrendering anything that the rich nations now own...

...The "common heritage" principle, adopted by the U.N...

...The wealth to be gained from the international areas would be shared under the authority of the United Nations, and a portion of it would go toward the alleviation of poverty in the developing countries...

...Only in the past two decades has it begun to reflect the common interest in the resources of the seabed, in conserving the living resources of the sea, and in the preservation of the marine environment itself...

...Many nations claim exclusive fishing grounds well beyond their territorial waters...

...General Assembly in 1970, establishing the world's marine resources as "the common heritage of mankind," will be overshadowed in the background of complicated short-term maneuvers...

...mining companies to lay claim to international waters despite the "common heritage" principle, and would also indemnify these companies against any losses incurred because of subsequent international decisions...

...To a greater extent than old style realists of state power are yet willing to acknowledge, the future belongs to the unifiers and the integrators . . . The open question is no longer whether the sovereign state will be domesticated...

...No more radical, nor more constructive concept can be found in international law than the principle of 'common heritage of mankind.' Only in the field of outer space law can an analogous example be found of a common commitment to the negation of sovereignty in the common interest...

...Yet relatively unimportant national contentions could win priority over mankind's long-term interests...

...In preparation for the Law of the Sea Conference— which is an outgrowth of the work of the U.N...

...The need for such a regime is reinforced by the imperatives of conservation...

...The third, and preferred, approach seems to me to be unification by global populism, e.g., a commitment to deal urgently and equitably with problems of war, poverty, environmental decay, depletion of resources, and deprivation of human rights, through the mechanisms of coordination and planning organized around a guidance rather than a governing system...

...Seabed Committee seeking order in the chaos of conflicting national interests competing for marine wealth in a shrinking world—a preliminary session was held at the United Nations in New York in December 1973...

...They could seek maximum exploitation rights for themselves while expressing meaningless platitudes about the needs of the hungry world...