Edwin Egede: Africa and the Deep Seabed Regime: Politics and International Law of the Common Heritage of Mankind

Abstract

Dr Edwin Egede’s book covers a geographical area and research theme that relatively few people working in Africa have the resources available to study at present. This is the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction known as the ‘Area’. The ‘Area’ is defined as ‘the seabed and ocean floor and subsoil thereof beyond the limits of national jurisdiction’. It commences beyond the continental shelf and consists of the ocean floor, submerged mountain ranges, ridges and trenches that are around 3,000–5,000 m deep. This can be distinguished from the seabed and subsoil within national jurisdiction that consists of the territorial sea, exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf. Barriers to exploitation highlighted in the book include the lack of technology, and difficulties for African states to fund their obligations to international organisations. In addition bureaucratic inertia could restrict states from participation in treaties. This book aims to fill a gap in the literature by exploring the role of African states in the development of the deep seabed and the concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind (CHM). In so doing, it places African states’ contributions to the evolution and development of the Area and the CHM in the context of vital historical, social, political and economic factors influencing African attitudes to the regime and concept. Bamela Engo, the African Chair of the First Committee of the UNCLOS (United Nations Conference of the Law of the Sea) III, mandated to examine the issues arising in the regime of the Area, pointed out that, ‘The race for the resources of the deep sea-beds was seen as a maritime repeat of the despicable scramble for Africa and, as such, provocative of contemporary economic and social misgivings’. The attempt to put forward seabed mining in the Area as a freedom of the high sea by developed industrialised states was, in the view of African states, a prelude to those developed states partitioning the Area and the resources therein amongst themselves. The author describes the African concept of ownership of underwater resources. Various conventions have discussed the legal status of the ‘Area’—is it res nullius or an extension of the continental shelf and subject to exploitation like the shelf? A territory that is designated res communis cannot be appropriated by any state but is nevertheless open to