International environmental obligations and liabilities in deep seabed mining

Abstract

This research addresses two major legal questions faced by

all participants in Deep Seabed Mining (DSM) – the contractor, sponsoring

State and International Seabed Authority (ISA). Namely, what are their

international environmental obligations? What are the conditions for establishing, the contents and implementation of their international environmental liabilities? It is argued that, although playing different roles, participants in DSM are imposed with the substantively same international environmental obligations. Most prominently, they should comply with the principle of prevention, the precautionary approach and conduct or review environmental impact assessments, the purpose of which is to avoid or prevent the occurrence of environmental damage. In case of the occurrence of environmental damage, liability would arise if wrongful acts of the participants and causal link between their acts and the environmental damage can be proved. Yet, in practice, both establishing and implementing environmental liability would encounter formidable difficulties. Due to the great gaps in marine scientific knowledge, the environmental damage would be hard to be identified and evaluated, the wrongful act and causation would also be difficult to prove. For these reasons, she suggests that alternative regimes such as administrative liability of the contractor and environmental compensation fund might be the future directions.