Secrets of the Deep.

Approximately 30 years ago, Dr. Arvid Pardo, the Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations, asked the international community: To whom do the ocean floor and its subsoil belong? He opened a Pandora's box that launched a true revolution on the international law of the sea. Dr. Pardo referred to the above-mentioned submarine international zone and its resources as the "common heritage of mankind". That concept was translated into Spanish as "patrimonio comun de la humanidad" and into French as "patrimoine commun de l'humanite". In Spanish, and I assume also in French, the term "patrimonio" has a clearly defined legal connotation as the ensemble of goods belonging to a person-natural or juridical. A United Nations Committee was established to study this matter; English-speaking delegations refused to accept the term patrimony apparently for linguistic reasons, also because Dr. Pardo used the term heritage. Very probably, industrialized nations preferred to use a term deprived of precise legal conno tation. When the first report of that Committee expressed a broad area of disagreement, Ambassadors Alfonso Garcia Robles of Mexico and Ramiro Saraiba Guerriero of Brazil developed the idea of declaring a moratorium to avoid exploitation of the seabed resources until an international regime could be established. Their draft resolution was approved by the General Assembly, with the support mainly of developing countries. Industrialized countries rejected the moratorium since, from the beginning of this exercise, their position was to reserve the right to exploit the seabed, independent from the international regime to be established, unless that regime was favourable to their national interests. At that time, most Governments believed that the exploitation of the deep seabed was near.

I would like to pay homage to the memory of Ambassador Garcia Robles, whose name in those days was mentioned as a possible Secretary-General of the United Nations. Ambassador Garcia Robles did not hesitate; he thought the moratoria was the right thing to do and, in promoting it, he irritated several permanent members of the Security Council whose support, he knew, was essential to be elected Secretary General.

When the General Assembly approved the Declaration of Principles Governing the Seabed and the Ocean Floor, and the Subsoil. Thereof, beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction, and recognizing that the ocean floor and its resources are the "common heritage of mankind", the scope of the concept was very broad. Even today, there are two extreme interpretations. For most developing countries, the Principle of the Common Heritage of Mankind means that the exploitation of the resources of the Area must be for the benefit mainly of the developing countries. For the industrialized nations, that Principle means that whoever has the resources and technology is entitled to exploit the Area, with a profit-oriented criteria and in accordance with the mandates of the market.

When the work began to determine what kind of regime had to be established, two approaches were mentioned: a system according to which the UN Secretariat should limit itself to register the activities in the Area, and a system that recognized the authority of the United nations to grant licenses for the control of such activities. A group of diplomats from Carribean and Latin American countries accredited to the United Nations met informally in New York to prepare a recommendation for their Governments about the position they should adopt.

Although taking the risk of forgetting one or more persons, I will mention the names I remember: Orlando Rebagliati (Argentina), Sergio Thompson Flores (Brazil), Espinosa Valderrama (Colombia), Fernando Zegers (Chile), Alvaro de Soto (Peru), and Lenox Ballah (Trinidad and Tobago). I had the privilege of representing my country, Mexico, in those informal consultations. We felt the need for an authority with the legal capacity to regulate and control the exploration and exploitation of the seabed resources and to distribute the profit obtained among nations with an equitable criteria, bearing in mind the needs of the poorest countries. Such criteria followed the letter and the spirit of the above-mentioned Declaration of Principles. That philosophy was based on the belief that mankind as a whole was the legitimate owner of those resources.

We made the comparison between the future regime for the seabed resources and the legal regime of oil deposits existing within the borders of a State. Nobody contested the right of oil-producing States to exploit directly or though joint ventures that particular natural resource. If the crude oil existing in the subsoil is considered an economic input when a nation agrees on a joint venture with foreign companies, we proposed a similar regime for the exploitation of the deep seabed resources, since mankind has property rights over that submarine raw material.

Even if the ideas were developed collectively, Brazilian diplomat Sergio Thompson Flores launched an idea, giving the Authority and the Enterprise the exclusive right for the exploitation of the seabed resources directly or through joint ventures. This approach was rapidly accepted by the Latin American and Caribbean Governments, and later on by the other developing countries of Africa and Asia represented in the Group of 77. The industrialized countries did not accept the approach.

Now we know the results of the negotiations that lasted for about 25 years. First, the industrialized countries did not accept the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Later, they imposed the Agreement of implementation of Part XI under the implicit threat that if there was no agreement, their position was that the Convention did not bind them. They sustained they were free to exploit the ocean floor beyond their national jurisdictions in accordance with their domestic law.

The developing countries were very wise in accepting the Agreement of implementation since universality is essential for the efficiency of the International Seabed Authority (ISBA). They were forced to accept the better of two evils.

The industrialized countries now have a strong influence within the ISBA; their companies may compete with the ISBA Enterprise on equal footing; the Council is stronger vis-a-vis the Assembly; the Legal and Technical Committee has more power; the interests of pioneering companies are well represented; the rules of procedure provide a veto right to the different chambers or interest groups represented in the Council; and transfer of technology is for sale.

Certainly, we are now very far away from the dream of Arvid Pardo who, no doubt, understood the Principle of the Common Heritage of Mankind as a means to start closing the growing gap between developing and developed countries. The task of those who work today in the field of the ISBA is to achieve the universality of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea with the effective participation of the industrialized world.

The responsibility of developing countries is to actively participate, in order to achieve an equitable system for their peoples within the existing legal framework, with the hope that it will be possible to use the seabed towards alleviating the human suffering of the poorest among the poor.

If the generous objectives of Dr. Pardo are forgotten, we will face, among others, two risks: the further accumulation of wealth in the hands of the richest among the rich; and an increase in the gigantic amount of useless speculative money that moves around the world with the speed of light, destabilizing the fragile economies of developing countries.

We are still in the process of creating an international regime for the deep seabed through the activities of the ISBA and its organs. It is convenient to think about the world situation surrounding this process.

As was foreseen, during the second half of 1999, world population reached 6 billion. From 1960 to 1999, it doubled. It is possible to predict that in half a century it will reach 10 billion. By the year 2010, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 680 million people will suffer from hunger.

As Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated in his letter of 26 May 1999 to the President of the European Council: "Time and again, the international community has affirmed its commitment to reducing global poverty. And yet some 3 billion people, mostly in developing countries, continue to live on the margin of subsistence, with little hope of a better life for their children. The poorest countries do not have access to private capital markets. Their growth prospects are constrained by the steady deterioration in terms of trade and by the continued decline in flows of official development assistance."

Nobody expects that the deep seabed resources will solve the extreme poverty suffered by many nations, but it is fair to expect that the international regime for the exploration of those resources will make a contribution towards solving the most dramatic problems of mankind.

It is still difficult to predict the economic importance of the seabed through the twenty-first century. Thanks to the activities of the ISBA and its Secretariat, it is possible to describe the development of mineral resources of the Area.

Ambassador Luis Vallarta is the Permanent Representative of Mexico to the International Seabed Authority and the President of the ISBA Assembly during its fifth session.