The Debate: Years After Treaty Goes Into Force, Mining on the Seafloor Ratchets Up

HEADNOTE ❧ The issue of deep seabed mining, how to manage it, and who benefits from it was a topic of intense debate during the lengthy period of negotiations to develop the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in the 1970s and 1980s. Now that mining is set to get underway, It is still a topic of heated concern, which is why here we present a cluster of articles on seafloor mining in advance of the July meeting of the instrumentality created by UNCLOS to regulate sea-floor mining, the International Seabed Authority.