Presentation on Equity and fairness in deep-sea mining on ESIL Conference

From 30 August to 2 September 2023, Catherine Blanchard participated in the Annual Conference of the European Society of International Law (ESIL), which took place in Aix-en-Provence. This year’s conference theme asked ‘Is International law fair?’ and addressed questions as to the values inherent in international law. Different panels therefore discussed questions related to the concept of fairness within international organizations, criminal law, human rights, international litigation, the allocation of maritime spaces and the law of investments, just to name a few.

Catherine took part in a panel on Fairness, Natural Resources, Shared Resources, and Common Spaces, and gave a presentation entitled ‘The Regulation of Deep-Sea Mineral Activities: What Role for Fairness?’. Her presentation explored how different dimensions of equity in resource management (identity – who takes part in the dialogue, procedural – how the dialogue is conducted, and distributional – how rights, obligations, burden and benefits are distributed) take shape in the discourse on deep-sea mining, including within issues related to the equitable sharing of benefits, the access to the deep seabed, and environmental impacts.

For the complete programme of the conference, see this pdf.