Potential Contribution of Sponsoring State and Its National Legislation to the Deep Seabed Mining Regime

Companies and legal persons intending to conduct activities in the Area must be sponsored by a State Party of the UNCLOS, which constitute a “dual-track mechanism” with ISA as a primary regulator and sponsoring state as a secondary regulator. This regime setting places companies and legal persons subject to international and national legislation simultaneously. The sponsoring state’s national legislation is thus an integrated part of the DSM regime. This resolves the defects that private entities in DSM are not subject to international law and weak enforcement of international organizations. However, UNCLOS neither draws a clear line of competence between the sponsoring state and the ISA nor provides compulsory components that national legislation should contain, resulting in the disparity between the objective of the establishment of sponsorship and the status quo of the sponsoring state’s role and its national legislation. This paper analyzes the competence of a sponsoring state and regulatory aspects it should focus on to assist the ISA and further proposes such components of the national legislation contributing to the DSM regime.