International Law and Its Evolution

Abstract

Access to marine mineral resources for exploration and exploitation purposes is not unrestricted. It is tightly controlled both by the international law of the sea and by national legal systems. The international law of the sea, long before its most recent version (that of the 1982 United Nations Convention), established the legal foundations of the new regime of resources in a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on 17th December 1970 (resolution 2749), formulating the “principles governing the sea-bed and the ocean floor, and the subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction”. The principles can be summarised through two complementary ideas which are incorporated in the Convention: firstly, national non-appropriation of seabed resources, and secondly the affirmation that these resources are for the benefit of mankind, established as a new subject of the law, and are the common heritage of mankind.