The United Nations and seabed mining: A negotiations analysis.

摘要

This study explains Part XI and associated annexes of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as the negotiated outcome of a process that began with Malta's Ambassador suggesting both danger and opportunity from seabed mining when placing the issue on the 1967 agenda of the United Nations General Assembly. Summary records of the Committee established in response to Malta's proposal and summary records of the First Committee of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which followed, are examined through I. William Zartman's Formula/Detail approach to negotiations.; The study finds that in the first two years the parties established a cognitive structure for the seabed issue: jurisdiction, order, protection for existing high seas uses, problems of developing countries; and defined the negotiating problem as a regime for the seabed. Furthermore, combining adversarial and problem solving techniques over the next ten years, the parties searched for common referent principles on these four points and for procedures to guarantee the principles.; By 1970, the parties made formal an agreed set of fifteen principles, vaguely wording the jurisdictional and economic points, and redefined the negotiating problem as a review of the entire law of the sea plus new law and organization for the seabed. Having been reconciled by a commissioned expert study in 1974, two previously opposed principles--minimize the adverse effects of seabed mining and encourage seabed mining--were traded off and added to the agreed set, along with preliminary implementing procedures. In 1978, after the United States threatened unilateral action and offered another set of procedural trade offs following three failed attempts to construct a single negotiating text guaranteeing economic principles, agreement was reached on final elements of the formula for the seabed issue: a parallel system of access to the Area, the banking procedure, production control, and a review conference after twenty years.; Then, an innovative mediation/arbitration working procedure yielded treaty article detail within three years. This study also finds that expert consultants influenced defining the negotiating problem, developing the formula, and implementing detail, and that respected delegates exercised creative drafting duties.