Deep-Sea Mining Beyond National Jurisdiction: A legal and Policy Update

Introduction 

The deep-sea contains substantial mineral resources that are increasingly viewed as essential for modern technological development. These resources - polymetallic nodules, polymetallic sulphides, and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts - have attracted growing interest from companies seeking to explore and eventually exploit them, both within national jurisdictions and beyond. 

In June 2025, Timelex prepared a Deliverable report for the TRIDENT project (https://deepseatrident.eu/), providing a comprehensive legal and policy analysis of deep-sea mining at international, EU, and national level. Timelex participates in TRIDENT as the consortium partner responsible for legal, policy, and ethics analysis, ensuring that technological development is aligned with evolving regulatory and governance requirements. TRIDENT is a Horizon Europe project aimed at developing and demonstrating a system of continuous, real-time environmental monitoring of deep-sea industrial activities, integrating existing and emerging technologies to ensure no significant harm is done to the marine environment. 

While opposition to deep-sea mining is growing, political and economic momentum suggests that mining may nevertheless proceed. Against this backdrop, TRIDENT represents an environmental baseline for real-time monitoring of deep-sea disturbances (including deep-sea mining). The TRIDENT baseline is flexible and applicable to all deep-sea habitats and allows for the setting of environmental thresholds that can be monitored in real-time. 

Growing interest in Seabed Minerals 

Although commercial deep-sea mining has not yet commenced as of 2025, momentum is building. Announcements by sponsoring States, increasing activity under domestic legal regimes, and geopolitical pressure to secure access to critical raw materials have all contributed to expectations that commercial exploitation could begin in 2026. 

At the same time, opposition has intensified. Scientists, civil society organizations, and a growing number of States have called for a moratorium or precautionary pause arguing that deep-sea ecosystems remain insufficiently understood and that the environmental risks associated with large-scale mining cannot yet be adequately assessed or managed. This tension between economic ambition and environmental caution defines the current debate. 

Critical raw materials and strategic drivers 

The renewed interest in deep-sea mining is closely linked to the demand for critical raw materials. These minerals underpin key technologies used in electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, digital infrastructure, and defense applications. The European Union identifies 34 critical raw materials, of which 16 are deemed strategic. 

Global demand for minerals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements has grown rapidly in recent years, driven by the energy transition, geopolitical tensions, supply-chain vulnerabilities, and concerns about the environmental and social impacts of terrestrial mining. Against this backdrop, seabed minerals are increasingly framed as part of a broader strategy for resource security. 

The legal baseline beyond national jurisdiction 

Deep-sea mining beyond national jurisdiction is governed by the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and its 1994 Implementation Agreement. These instruments designate the seabed beyond the national jurisdiction – referred to in UNCLOS as “the Area” - as the Common Heritage of Humankind and entrust regulatory authority to the ISA. Activities taking place outside the Area, i.e., within the domestic jurisdiction of coastal States, are managed by domestic regulations which are embedded in a wider framework of international and regional legal instruments. 

The ISA is mandated to: 

• Regulate exploration and exploitation through the Mining Code; 
• Control access to seabed resources via contracts; and 
• Ensure the effective protection of the marine environment. 

While exploration contracts are in force, exploitation regulations remain under negotiation, leaving the Mining Code incomplete. As of December 2025, the ISA has issued 32 exploration contracts with the most recent contract awarded to Government of India on 15 September 2025 for exploration of polymetallic sulphides. The majority of the contracts relate to polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Pacific Ocean. 

The UNCLOS is complemented by two further implementing agreements - the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement and the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement). While the BBNJ Agreement does not regulate mineral extraction, it establishes a comprehensive legal framework for the protection of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, particularly in relation to environmental impact assessments (EIA) and Area-Based Management Tools (ABMTs). While the BBNJ Agreement does not regulate mineral extraction as such, it has direct relevance to deep-sea mining because mining activities on the seabed generate sediment plumes, noise, and other disturbances that extend into the water column and affect marine ecosystems. 

Hence, the relationship between the ISA regime and the BBNJ Agreement is therefore one of coexistence and necessary coordination, inter alia¸ to ensure ISA’s mandate to develop AMBTs are not affected and avoid duplication of EIA process. At the same time, the BBNJ Agreement expressly seeks not to undermine existing legal instruments and bodies, including the ISA. Ensuring effective coordination between these regimes will be essential to avoid regulatory fragmentation. 

Current state of the Mining Code

In 2023, the ISA adopted an indicative roadmap for concluding the exploitation regulations, later updated in 2024. The roadmap envisaged possible adoption by July 2025, however due to several unresolved issues, the discussions will continue onto the thirty-first session of the ISA. 

The unresolved issues include environmental standards, compliance mechanisms, and financial terms. Negotiations have progressed only partially, making it likely that further timelines extended beyond 2025 will be required. 

During the July 2025 meetings, as part of the Council’s thirtieth session, the Council resumed formal consideration of the draft exploitation regulations. They were extensive: 

• The Council completed a full reading of the Revised Consolidated Text of the exploitation regulations, covering draft regulations 56 to 107, thereby concluding its review of the entire text issued in January 2025; 
• Fourteen informal meetings were held, alongside multiple informal working groups and Friends of the President groups, addressing key thematic areas such as: 
  •  Environmental management and monitoring; o Inspection, compliance and enforcement; o Financial terms and payment mechanisms; 
  • Effective control; 
  •  Environmental compensation; 
  • Submarine cable protection; and 
  • Underwater cultural heritage. 

Despite this progress, the Council did not adopt the exploitation regulations in July 2025. Instead, it formally acknowledged that substantial work remains outstanding. In particular:

• Numerous provisions still lack agreed language and require further negotiations; 
• Thirteen annexes, an appendix and the schedule were not reviewed line by line, but only discussed conceptually; 
• Several key definitions remain unresolved and were deliberately retained within informal working groups; 
• The Council reaffirmed the principle that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, meaning that partial consensus cannot support adoption. 

Recognizing the limits of session-based negotiations, the Council adopted a decision on a thematic approach to guide further work during the intersessional period and into the thirty-first session (2026). 

Outlook for 2026: 

Negotiations at the ISA continue through intersessional work, with the ISA Secretarial preparing a further revised draft to be published ahead of the thirty-first Council session in March 2026. 

At the same time, developments outside the ISA framework have intensified geopolitical pressure. In April 2025, the United States (U.S.) issued an executive order authorizing seabed mineral exploration and commercial exploitation in the Area under domestic law. While the U.S. is not party to the UNCLOS, the move was widely criticized as undermining the multilateral seabed regime. Shortly thereafter, a subsidiary of The Metals Company applied for a U.S. commercial mining permit in the CCZ, targeting mining by late 2027. 

Within the ISA regime, momentum for development of exploitation regulations increased after the Republic of Nauru’s 2021 notification, which triggered the so-called “two-year rule” under the 1994 Implementation Agreement. That mechanism was intended to prevent indefinite delay by obliging the ISA Council to finalize the exploitation rules or otherwise consider an application for exploitation. Although the two-year period expired in 2023, the Council reaffirmed that commercial exploitation should not proceed in the absence of adopted rules, regulations and procedures, and no application was submitted at that time. Republic of Nauru’s 2024 announcement that its sponsored contractor would submit an exploitation application in June 2025 was not followed through, leaving the timing of the first application uncertain. 

Environmental protection: from principles to thresholds 

Environmental protection under UNCLOS, the 1994 Agreement and the BBNJ Agreement is a binding legal obligation, not a policy preference. Two principles are central: 

• The precautionary approach, and; 
• The ecosystem approach. 

Precautionary approach means that taking early action, i.e., precautionary measures to prevent environmental harm, even if scientific uncertainty about the risks remain. It enables decision making under conditions of uncertainty, allowing action to be taken despite limited evidence or incomplete information. While the UNCLOS does not explicitly codify precautionary approach, it has been progressively integrated into deep-sea mining governance through international practice and jurisprudence, enabling regulatory action in situations of scientific uncertainty and incomplete information. 

The draft exploitation regulations embed precaution through mandatory EIAs, adaptive management, use of best available science and technology, and the development of environmental thresholds. 

The ecosystem approach complements precaution by requiring holistic management of mining activities to maintain ecosystem structure, function, and resilience, taking into account cumulative impacts of human activities. 

What has evolved is how these principles are operationalized. Following an ISA Council decision (ISBA/27/C/42), the ISA was explicitly requested to develop binding environmental threshold values, including early-warning thresholds and limits indicating the maximum level of acceptable harm. 

Current work, highlighted in a progress report of July 2025, focuses on thresholds for key mining-related pressures, including:

•  Toxicity from metal mobilization; 
• Turbidity and sedimentation from plumes; 
• Underwater noise and light pollution. 

Through the work of the Legal and Technical Commission and an Intersessional Expert Group, environmental protection is being translated into measurable regulatory limits, linked to Zones of Impact and Ecological Reference Points. This has legal implications: 

• Precaution is being transformed into enforceable standards;
• Continuous monitoring becomes legally indispensable, and 
• Defining “acceptable harm” is recognized as a regulatory and societal choice, not a purely scientific one. 

The European Union context The European Union (EU) is a global leader in marine environmental governance, built on a dense framework of directives and policies grounded in an ecosystem-based approach. Central among these is the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) through common descriptors and indicators. 

However: 

• The EU law does not specifically regulate deep-sea mining; 
• Competence for regulating marine industries largely lies with Member States; 
• Implementation of the MSFD has proven uneven, with monitoring gaps and continued biodiversity decline across many EU sea basins. 

Among regional sea conventions, OSPAR has been the most active in engaging with deep-sea mining related issues. Politically, the EU approach to deep-sea mining has undergone a marked shift over the past decade, from identifying deep-sea mining as a promising blue economy sector to adopting a more cautious and precautionary stance from mid-2010s onwards. This shift is evident in a series of policy documents, including the 2018 European Parliament Resolution advocating an international pause on deep-sea mining, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the updated International Ocean Governance Agenda in 2022, Yet, no unified EU position exists, reflecting divergent views among institutions and Member States. 

Even though there is no common view on deep-sea mining across different EU organs and its Member States, the EU played a central role in negotiating the BBNJ Agreement (received 60th ratification in September 2025 which marks satisfaction of the condition for entry into force of the agreement), promoting strong environmental safeguards, precautionary approaches, and coherence with existing legal frameworks, which will further shape environmental governance beyond national jurisdiction. 

TRIDENT Project 

Against this evolving legal and policy backdrop, TRIDENT’s core objective is to deliver and demonstrate a system for continuous, real-time environmental monitoring of deep-sea industrial activities, integrating existing and emerging technologies. 

TRIDENT’s multi-scale environmental baseline framework combines biotope mapping, ecological characterization, and predictive modelling. This represents a significant methodological advance and provides a proof-of-concept for environmental baseline assessments to potential mining activities. 

Importantly, the proof-of-concept was designed to test the effectiveness of TRIDENT’s real-time monitoring technology in a simulated environment. It does not replicate the scale or complexity of a full-scale commercial mining activity where the environmental baseline’s purpose is to protect against impact. The results nevertheless demonstrate that TRIDENT’s real-time monitoring framework works, and that an iterative, adaptive baseline approach - continuously refined as new data is collected - is both feasible and necessary for deep-sea mining activities. 

However, establishing robust environmental thresholds remains challenging. Long term monitoring is required to capture seasonal and inter-annual variability, additional ecological and ecotoxicological research is essential to understand cumulative and long-term impacts. If commercial mining proceeds, TRIDENT provides a credible foundation for precautionary, adaptive management, while acknowledging that further research is needed on broader impacts of deep-sea mining. 

Looking ahead, TRIDENT’s long-term strategic direction is to, inter alia, translate its outputs into management-ready tools, support best-practice guidance aligned with ISA environmental management standards. This includes investing in autonomous monitoring technologies, embedding TRIDENT outputs into adaptive management systems that can evolve as regulatory requirements and scientific knowledge mature. 

TRIDENT’s contributions are already visible. At the June 2025 ISA technical scoping workshop, where TRIDENT delivered 3 presentations. In the context of improving marine data and the knowledge repository, TRIDENT is identified as one of the pilot projects by the ISA as part of its action plan for marine scientific research. 

Conclusion 

Deep-sea mining is moving closer to reality, driven by strategic demand for critical minerals and geopolitical pressures. Yet international and EU law continue to impose clear limits. Environmental protection, precaution and regulatory completeness remain legal prerequisites. 

TRIDENT helps translate legal obligations into operational reality, supporting informed decision-making at the ISA, within the EU, and beyond, at a decisive moment for the future governance of the deep-sea.