Shawdesh desk:

At the 28th council of the International Seabed Authority being held in Kingston, Jamaica, negotiations resumed on Environmental Impact Assessment.

Bangladesh delegate Rear Admiral (retd) Md Khurshed Alam, secretary (maritime affairs unit) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took part in the deliberations and significantly contributed to the negotiations.

The meeting of the Council is taking place from July 10-21, 2023 and the ISA Assembly will meet from July 24-28, 2023.

Delegates deliberated on the meaning of ‘cumulative effects’ within the context of synergetic effects and expressed a preference for differentiating between ‘impacts’ and ‘effects’.

Deliberations also took place on the reference to ‘coastal states’, difference between ‘environmental impact statements’ and ‘environmental impact assessments’, text of the Regulations on Environmental Impact Assessment Scoping Report, identification of potential cumulative effects and extension of public consultation activities.

Most delegates observed that all EIS should be publicly available, suggesting creating an actual public repository of these documents separate from the official ISA webpage. Discussions also took place on whether the test mining should be done, the sequence of test mining and its timing.

Most delegations noted their preference that this be done during the exploration phase and would like to see defined scales of testing program and the assessments that need to take place.

However, some delegates asked for a new definition of ‘test mining’ and reminded that the work should be coordinated with the submarine cables.

The session of the Informal working group on the protection and preservation of the marine environment asked all eight inter-sessional working groups established in March 2023 to resume the inter-sessional work and report in November.

At the discussions on the informal working group on inspection, compliance and enforcement, a report was summarised on the work it facilitated inter-sessionally to formulate a model for an inspection mechanism.

The report proposes a hybrid model that takes different approaches into consideration, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday.

In particular, it proposes the establishment of a Compliance Committee within the LTC which would be responsible for overall compliance and enforcement issues.

While deliberations took place on whether the LTCCC should be autonomous or created within the LTC, caution was also expressed against creating new bodies not supported under UNCLOS.

Regarding Regulation on Inspections, emphasis was given on streamlining the text and amending those to ensure consistency with the terms used in the UNCLOS.