The draft exploitation regulations for the seabed beyond national jurisdiction reached the Council in 2019 and are unadopted as of 2026-08-18, and the two-year rule invoked on 2021-06-30 attaches no penalty, default text or fallback authority to the failure to adopt

What is happening?

Articles 136 and 137 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea declare the seabed beyond national jurisdiction and its mineral resources — the Area — to be the common heritage of mankind, vest all rights in those resources in mankind as a whole, and place their exercise with the International Seabed Authority acting on behalf of mankind. The Authority has 169 member states plus the European Union, as of 2026-08-18.

Mining that seabed commercially requires a body of exploitation regulations, commonly called the Mining Code, that the Authority has to adopt. A draft reached the Council in 2019 as document ISBA/25/C/WP.1. It has not been adopted since.

On 2021-06-30 a member state that sponsors a contractor gave the notice that starts the two-year rule of the 1994 Implementation Agreement: if the Council has not adopted the regulations within two years of the notice, it must nonetheless proceed to consider an application under whatever rules exist at that time. The two-year point arrived in July 2023 with no regulations adopted. The Council then set its own target of completing the work by the 30th session. In 2024 it completed a first reading and stopped short of adoption. A session closing on 2026-03-19 ended without agreement, with more than 30 states calling by then for a moratorium or a precautionary pause. A session running 2026-07-13 through 2026-07-24 deferred adoption again, to the ordinary session of March 2027, and in the same session extended by five years the exploration contract of the contractor whose sponsoring state had given the 2021 notice.

While that was happening, a separate route opened. On 2025-04-29 the United States subsidiary of that contractor lodged applications with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for one commercial recovery permit and two exploration licences. The legal basis is a 1980 domestic statute, the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, which sits outside the Authority framework. The United States is not a party to the Convention. A Congressional Research Service product records that four of the applications overlap areas already allocated under the Authority framework — a count that does not fit the three applications the same round of reporting describes, and that no opened source reconciles. The same product records that the Secretary-General of the Authority stated in public remarks in March and April 2025 that unilateral action of that kind would violate international law and would destabilise the global ocean governance regime. No source opened here identifies a binding instrument through which the Authority can compel a non-party state.

The applicant published its own reason on 2025-03-27: it said it was seeking a regulator with a robust framework that would review its application fairly, and it pointed to ten years of engagement with the Authority without adopted regulations. The sponsoring state publishes its own reason on a government page, which frames the notice as a route to economic development and to climate adaptation financing.

Whose problem is this?

The body that has to finish the rules is the body that already declared it would finish them, and it has moved its own date more than once. Nothing outside that body can make it finish, and the people named as the beneficiaries of the resource are not represented in the room as a constituency that can be counted.

Where does this problem end?

The boundary here is drawn around the absence of the rules and not around the question of whether mining should proceed at all.

That distinction is what keeps this document measurable. A reader who thinks seabed mining should be banned and a reader who thinks it should start next year can both agree on the dates below.

What is the state now, and what should it be?

Now

What it should be

The target state here is unusual for this corpus, because the institution named it itself and named it twice. The 1994 Implementation Agreement fixes the first date by operation of law: two years from the 2021-06-30 notice, which is July 2023. The Council then set the second date by its own resolution, aiming at completion by the 30th session. The current date, from the decision of 2026-07-24, is the ordinary session of March 2027.

The institution that set the target is the same institution that has to meet it, and nothing outside it can compel the timetable.

How big is it?

The magnitudes that opened sources actually carry are institutional and ecological, not a headcount of harmed people.

Institutional scale. 169 member states plus the European Union are parties to the regime, as of 2026-08-18. 46 states had called for a moratorium or precautionary pause as of 2026-08-13, up from more than 30 as of March 2026, and none of that support binds a Council vote.

The one named group with a counted size. Part XI directs that the special interests and needs of developing states, and among them particularly the least developed and the landlocked, be taken into account, and the same construction appears in Article 82 paragraph 4 for the distribution of shelf payments. As of 2024 there are 32 landlocked developing countries with a combined population of 592.8 million, or 7.3 percent of world population. Two cautions travel with that figure. Article 148 of Part XI and Article 82 paragraph 4 are different provisions governing different money, and the landlocked group is a subset of the developing states the provisions name, not the whole of it.

Ecological scale. A 2023 catalogue of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, the area the exploration contracts cover, listed 5,578 species, of which 5,142, about 92 percent, were new to science. That figure measures how much is unknown at the moment decisions are being taken, and it is not a human population. A trade source attributes to the United States Geological Survey an estimate of 21.01 billion dry tonnes of nodules in the zone, and that source is a secondary one.

No affected population is derivable, and the reason is structural. The Convention vests the rights in mankind as a whole, which is a legal status rather than a counted set, and multiplying world population by that status would be a number without a source. The mechanism that would produce a real count is the benefit sharing the regulations are supposed to establish, and it does not exist yet. The economic assistance provision of the 1994 Agreement, which covers land-based producer states whose export prices might fall, conditions its own calculation on the start of commercial production.

No opened source counts the people who lose something measurable while the rules are absent.

So the term needed for the chain cannot come into existence while the exploitation regulations are unadopted and commercial production has not begun. That is recorded as not-derivable rather than filled in.

Under what conditions does it arise?

1. The obligation exists and the deadline carries no consequence. The two-year rule tells the Council what happens to an application after the date passes: it must be considered under whatever rules exist. It does not attach a penalty, a default text, or a fallback authority to the failure to adopt. So the date arrives, the legal position of the applicant changes, and the position of the Council does not.

2. Adoption runs on agreement among member states. A body that adopts by consensus can be held open by objection alone, and more than 30 states as of March 2026 were asking for the opposite of adoption, namely a pause. Both the states that want rules quickly and the states that want no mining at all have reason to withhold agreement from any particular text, which means the absence of a text is the one outcome that requires no coalition.

3. A route exists outside the regime for one class of actor. A state that is not a party to the Convention is not bound by Part XI, and a 1980 domestic statute already provides a licensing procedure. So the cost of the delay is not symmetric: for a contractor with access to that route the delay is a reason to leave, and for a contractor without it the delay is simply a wait.

4. Overlapping claims can exist without a forum that settles them. Four of the applications under the domestic statute overlap areas already allocated under the Authority framework, according to the Congressional Research Service product, which describes three applications in the same place. No opened source names a tribunal seized of the question or a binding instrument through which the Authority reaches a non-party state.

5. Exploration continues while exploitation stays unregulated. The session that deferred adoption to March 2027 extended an exploration contract by five years in the same decision. Exploration has a legal basis; production does not.

What has been tried?

Two directions have been pursued at once and neither has closed. One is to finish the rules, which has run for seven years across a first reading and several sessions. The other is to stop mining before the rules exist, which has gathered 46 states and no legal effect on the vote. A third direction now runs beside both, in the form of a permitting procedure under the domestic law of a state that never joined the Convention.

What was found?

Why is it still unsolved?

Institutional gap — the obligation to write the rules exists, the date to write them by existed twice, and nothing in the design attaches a consequence to missing it.

A deadline with no consequence attached to it is a date and not an obligation. The two-year rule of the 1994 Agreement is precise about one thing and silent about another. It tells the Council what to do with an application after the date passes, which is to consider it under whatever rules are then in force. It does not supply a default text, does not vest the drafting power anywhere else, and does not make the absence of regulations cost the Council anything. What the missed date changed was the position of an applicant, who could then be considered under thin rules, and not the position of the body that missed it.

The second part is that the absence of a text is the cheapest outcome to sustain. Adoption needs agreement; non-adoption needs nobody. As of March 2026 more than 30 states were asking for a pause rather than a rulebook, and as of 2026-08-13 that number was 46. Those states are not obstructing a process by any measure this document can apply, because declining to agree is a use of the procedure and not a departure from it. But it does mean that the two positions furthest apart on the underlying value question can both decline the same draft, and the result of that arithmetic is another session.

The third part is the one that changes the character of the gap. When the rules of a regime are unfinished, the actors who can go elsewhere do, and the actors who cannot wait. One route out already existed in a 1980 domestic statute of a state that never became a party to the Convention, so it needed no negotiation to open. That is why the deferral of 2026-07-24 and the applications of 2025-04-29 are one problem rather than two. Each further session that ends without a text widens the difference between what the multilateral route costs and what the parallel route costs, and no opened source identifies an instrument through which the Authority reaches the parallel route at all.

What observation would mean it is solved?

Candidates — (a) the Council adopts the exploitation regulations with a stated date of entry into force (b) applications lodged under national law outside the Convention are either withdrawn or brought under the framework of the Authority, with the overlapping areas resolved (c) a distribution of payments under the benefit-sharing mechanism actually reaches the states the Convention names.

(a) alone is weaker than it looks. Adoption is the observation this document is built to notice, and it still leaves the parallel route where it is. A state that is not a party to the Convention is no more bound the day after adoption than the day before, and four overlapping areas do not stop overlapping because a text was approved.

(b) alone measures one applicant. The route exists in a statute, not in a decision, so a withdrawal closes an application and not the route. The next applicant with access to the same jurisdiction faces the same two prices.

(c) is the strongest and the slowest. A payment reaching a named beneficiary is the only one of the three that shows the regime doing the thing Article 137 says it exists to do. It also cannot happen until commercial production happens, which means the observation that would confirm the problem solved is downstream of a decision this document deliberately does not take a position on. Read together, (a) fixes the rulebook, (b) tests whether the rulebook governs everyone it claims to, and (c) tests whether the rulebook delivers what the treaty promised. Any one of them alone can be true while the other two are false.

What is it connected to?

Fills with researchgovernance gaps in other global commons where an existing treaty body has an unfinished mandate, the treatment of high-seas biodiversity under the 2023 BBNJ agreement, critical-minerals supply policy in states pursuing seabed nodules, and dispute settlement under Part XV of the Convention where a non-party is involved. Relation type and evidence grade were not established in this round.

What these sources do not say

• What share of the global seabed the Area covers. No opened source gives it, including the official page of the Authority. Figures circulate in search results, and none of them was opened here, so none is carried.
• The area of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in square kilometres. No opened source gives it. The nodule tonnage estimate was available and the area was not.
• Which land-based producer states the economic assistance provision covers, or how many people live in them. This one is not a reporting gap. The 1994 Agreement conditions the calculation on the start of commercial production, so the figure cannot exist while production has not begun.
• Why the dates were missed. No opened source carries a reason on the record from the Council or from its member states. Sources record the sessions, the deferrals and the new dates, and none carries an explanation attributed to the body that set them.
• How the two counts of applications fit together. One product records one commercial recovery permit and two exploration licences, which is three, and the same product records four of the applications as overlapping areas already allocated. No opened source reconciles three with four.
• What the reviewing national agency thinks about the overlap. No opened source carries a statement from that agency about how it weighs applications covering areas already allocated under the Authority framework, or about whether the review has produced any decision.
• Whether the applications lead to mining, and what happens if they do. The review is pending, and no opened source predicts its outcome or describes how a dispute over overlapping areas would be resolved.
• The full positions of individual member states. The declarations supporting a moratorium or precautionary pause were available at the level of summaries and cumulative counts on the opened pages, and no opened source carries the full text of the statements state by state.
• Whether the primary Congressional Research Service report adds anything to the mirrored one. The original page returned an automated refusal, so only the mirrored product was read.

See the evidence

No primary document of the Authority was read beyond its public pages. The treaty text of Articles 136, 137 and 82 was opened directly and is the only primary source here read as an original instrument. The Mining Code page and the membership page of the Authority were opened and carry the unadopted status of the draft and the membership count. The two-year notice is documented on the government page of the sponsoring state, which is a party to the events and states its own reasons. Everything else — the session outcomes, the deferral, the contract extension, the applications under domestic law, the overlap count and the remarks of the Secretary-General — comes from a legislative research product and from media and trade reporting that cite Authority documents this round did not open. Where sources overlap they agree on the central facts: the draft is unadopted in every opened source, the missed two-year point appears in two, and the March 2027 deferral in one with no source contradicting it. Where they do not line up the discrepancy is left visible: three applications and four overlapping applications appear in the same product without reconciliation, and the share of the global seabed the Area covers is absent from every opened source rather than filled in from search results. The report at R47324 could not be retrieved and is listed with the refusal recorded. This is a Path A output, a research-based definition, so observation_refs is empty and provenance_mode: press-derived.

People affected

Estimated range Not derivable

The reason and what is missing are listed under “What is missing” below