Call for Papers: Thinking the World from the Deep Ocean

Following the recent publishing of the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss (Vol. XXVII, 2024) special issue, the editorial team—Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Dr Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe, Professor Nabil Ahmed, extended by, Jonathan Galka—invites submission for a special issue to be published with the Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific (CLJP). CLJP is a journal published by Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Law that aims to publish innovative academic research in the comparative legal contexts of the Pacific region. 
 
Its focus “Thinking the World from the Deep Ocean: Seabed Mining Across Resource, Regulatory and Ethical Frontiers”,emerged from the urgency to think expansively and critically about how to know, live with, and govern our shared ocean. In recent years, deep-sea mining (DSM) and its attendant institutions, regulatory frameworks, and ethical questions have become emblematic of the kinds of dilemmas we will collectively confront with increasing frequency as the demand for battery-grade ores to fuel a green energy transition runs up against a range of related anxieties concerning the health of the deep-sea environment, the sociopolitical implications of opening seabeds for extraction, and the capacity of international law and regulatory institutions to adequately plan for the future. It also necessitates the examination of the plausible ramifications for coastal communities whose ways of living and livelihoods are interdependent on healthy ocean ecosystems. 
 
The present call thus begins from the deep ocean—its diverse identities and histories, its overlapping scales of meaning and governance—to think upward and outward, starting from the context of seabed mining’s potential arrival while also moving beyond to rethink the horizons of possibility in the wider world for ocean geographies, legal frameworks and collective governance, as well as addressing who benefits from deep sea resource extraction. 
 
We welcome submissions across the full spectrum of disciplines and methods on the following themes:

1. The International Law of the Sea

1. The upcoming exploitation code at the International Seabed Authority
2. Relationships between UNCLOS and other normative ocean frameworks, e.g. the BBNJ Agreement, Regional Fishing Management Organizations; and non-oceanic frameworks, e.g. the Nagoya Protocol, the UN Convention on Biodiversity.
3. Concepts of ownership, stewardship, heritage
4. Environmental governance, including the integration of evolving ecological frameworks and methods (e.g. eDNA metabarcoding) in spatial management (APEI’s)
5. Concepts of territorial division or zonation, between international and national waters/seabeds, water/land, seabed/water column/surface, living/nonliving, resources/not resources
6. Expanding concepts of benefits & their sharing, technology & knowledge transfer, notions of training, including proposals for legal frameworks embodying fair benefits-sharing.
7. Links between DSM, ocean policy, and the New International Economic Order

2. Alternative Approaches to Law and Governance

1. Alternative approaches to law and governance including Earth jurisprudence, the rights of nature in the deep sea, animal rights, or environmental personhood
2. Frameworks like common heritage of (hu)mankind, ecocide
3. Indigenous or customary approaches to law, culture, and land, e.g. tabu, rahui, kastom
4. Vernacular forms of organization, mutual aid, protest.
5. South-South or North-South forms of solidarity, especially across contexts where seabed mining is proposed or already underway, e.g. Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands, Norway, Namibia

3. Relationships between deep-sea mining and other speculative frontiers

1. Trawling fisheries, marine biotech and pharmaceuticals, fossil energies including oil and gas, renewable energies (OTEC, tidal, wave), diverse forms of DSM including not only polymetallic nodules, but also cobalt-rich crusts, and hydrothermal sulphides.
2. Resource-making and resource commodification; speculation, financialization, and commodification as imbricated processes.
3. Colonial and decolonial contexts.

 
Submissions should consist of a title, five keywords, and an abstract (max. 250 words), sent via email to ntuccaresearch@ntu.edu.sg with subject line “CLJP Special Issue – [Surname]”. 

Please refer to the Call for Papers for further information.

Image credit: inhabitants with Margarida Mendes, What is Deep Sea Mining? (2019–20), installation view, NTU CCA Singapore.