Mining in areas outside national jurisdiction is fast becoming a reality and many existing international treaties are no longer fit for purpose.
Critical minerals
What regulatory principles should govern resource extraction in domains beyond national jurisdiction?
It’s one of the fundamental questions of International Law and one of the areas UTS Law academic, Dr Cait Storr explores in a body of research focusing, in part, on the fraught relationship between sovereign rights and the principle of the common heritage of mankind (CHM)*.
Dr Storr looks at efforts to combine the principle with the regulation of resource extraction in the international seabed, in Antarctica and in Space. Many of the existing treaties and agreements were formulated decades ago at a time when the idea of extracting minerals from these spaces was just that, an idea.
It’s now fast approaching reality and she says these treaties are no longer fit for purpose:
The regulation of resource extraction in domains beyond national jurisdiction resurfaces as an acute geopolitical fault line, particularly with respect to Antarctica and outer space.
In her latest work, Dr Storr also looks at Australia’s record in this area.
She maintains that Australia’s long history of identifying the national interest with the interests of extractive industry - coal, iron ore, uranium – colours its approach to governance of domains outside its jurisdiction and this hampers Australia’s ability to engage with the CHM principle:
Expanding the field of sovereign extractive rights and furthering the interests of extractive industry have long been organising objectives in Australia’s engagements with international law and diplomacy. Those objectives have often placed Australia at odds with the international community.
Curiously, while both the US and the then Soviet Union rejected the Common Heritage provisions of the Moon Treaty in the 1980’s, Australia was one of only 18 countries to sign the UN brokered agreement.
However, even then, Dr Storr argues, it was a political decision by the Hawke government to distract from its decision to increase uranium mining in Australia, and to appease an increasingly powerful nuclear disarmament movement.
Dr Storr maintains Australia must put aside its obsession with expanding its own extractive interests and find a way to engage more meaningfully with one of the biggest international legal questions of our time.
* The common heritage of mankind principle prohibits national appropriation of territory in specific areas, but allows use for ‘peaceful purposes’, including scientific research and commerce.
