Who governs the deep sea? ANU research examines future of seabed mining

While the seabed contains resources critical for various industries, deep-sea mining could lead to new environmental and governance risks. How should humanity govern resource extraction from the least understood environment on earth? 

That question will be at the centre of discussions when members of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) Council meet from 29 June to 10 July 2026 to continue negotiations on draft regulations governing the exploitation of mineral resources in international waters. The ISA is the United Nations body established to organise and control activities in the seabed beyond national jurisdiction, while ensuring the effective protection of the marine environment. 

For Professor Nick Bainton from The Australian National University's School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), the negotiations highlight the difficulty of regulating the combination of frontier environments and new technologies, underpinned by significant uncertainties and competing political and economic interests. 

One of the major sticking points in previous negotiations has been how revenues generated from seabed mining would be distributed among member states.  

Because mineral resources in international waters are considered the common heritage of humankind under international law, all member states have a stake in how any future benefits are shared. 

Professor Bainton has spent more than two decades researching the social and political impacts of resource extraction across the Pacific region and has closely followed the development of deep-sea mining projects. Last year, he travelled to Kingston, Jamaica, to observe ISA negotiations firsthand as member states worked through the draft regulations. 

In his current research on seabed mining governance, Professor Bainton reflects on the fragmentation of regulatory instruments across international and domestic settings.  

His new paper, Extending terrestrial mining law to the seabed: Regulatory fit and the Papua New Guinea experience, co-authored with Daiana Seabra Venancio, examines the challenges of extending terrestrial mining laws into offshore environments. 

Drawing on Papua New Guinea’s experience as the first country to authorise commercial seabed mining, the authors show how regulators adapted existing mining and environmental legislation for the Solwara 1 project rather than developing a purpose-built seabed mining framework. 

They argue that this approach exposed structural pressures around fiscal management, environmental stewardship, consent and the distribution of benefits. The collapse of the Solwara 1 project in 2019 highlighted these pressures, prompting renewed efforts to reconsider how offshore extraction should be governed. 

The paper also analyses Papua New Guinea’s draft Mining Bill 2025, which represents the most developed attempt yet to govern offshore mining, but still embeds seabed mining within the logic of land-based mining, raising questions about regulatory fit. 

The authors argue that these regulatory challenges are not simply the result of weak governance. Instead, they reflect the difficulty of applying rules developed for mining on land to extraction beneath the ocean floor. 

As more coastal states consider how to govern seabed mining within their own jurisdictions, Papua New Guinea’s experience offers an early window into dynamics that are likely to recur elsewhere. 

Despite pressure from some governments and industry actors to finalise the ISA rules, Professor Bainton said the process is likely to take time.  In the meantime, the risk is further fragmentation between domestic regulations and the international regulatory regime.  

Speaking to ABC Pacific Beat earlier this year, he said the ISA negotiations involve multiple layers of decision-making and a large number of stakeholders. 

"It's a slow process because you've got so many different actors involved, between some 36 member states at the council level and 169 members at the assembly," he said. 

"Being a UN process, it means a democratic process, so everyone theoretically can have a voice and have a say, and that necessarily takes time." 

Uncertainty remains, he said, around both the timeline for completing the regulations and the shape of the regulatory framework. 

"The realistic scenario is we are several years away – optimistic, one to two years, or delayed indefinitely," he said. 

Image credit: Timon /Adobe Stock, reproduced with permission from the British Geological Survey © UKRI 2026.