IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned, being duly authorized, have signed thisProtocol.

　

　

The optimum level for technology cooperation, development and transfer is probably the regional level. States bordering regional seas and Contracting Parties to Regional Seas Conventions share the same environmental and security challenges, and in many cases, as, e.g., in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, the South-Pacific Islands, or South East Asia, they have evolved common cultural traits. The regional level thus offers a commonality of interests as well as an economy of scale, facilitating agreement on technological priorities, creativity in eco-technology development, and social acceptance of technologies.

　

　It is therefore not surprising that the Law of the Sea Convention does not offer much institutional innovation with regard to technology cooperation at the global level. The existing Competent International Organizations are exhorted to do their share. There is, however, one institution that might make an important contribution to joint technology development and transfer in a sector, which according to some scientists, may well become the most important among the sectors of oceanographic sciences in this new century. That is, the exploration of the deep sea-floor and what is below it. The institution responsible for this is the International Sea-bed Authority. This potential, however, has been generally neglected, within the Authority as well as outside of it.

　

　The Convention has lavished great detail on the Authority's mandate with regard to science and technology. Article 143 establishes that marine scientific research in the Area shall be carried out exclusively for peaceful purposes and for the benefit of mankind as a whole, which makes it part of the Common Heritage of Mankind. The Authority itself is authorized to carry out marine scientific research in the Area as well as to co-ordinate the research carried out by States, and to disseminate its results. Article 144 empowers the Authority to acquire technology and scientific knowledge and to promote and encourage the transfer to developing States of such technology and scientific knowledge.

　

　Detailed rules for the transfer of technology were contained in Article 5 of Annex III on “basic conditions of prospecting, exploration and exploitation.” These provisions have been widely criticized, both by the industrialized and the developing countries. For the industrialized countries and their companies, they appeared to be too stringent, even though it was generally recognized that the language was far more stringent than the substance and that there were sufficient loopholes to make it very difficult for any court to enforce them. Developing countries, thus, were dissatisfied because the provisions were not stringent enough, taking, in the best of cases, so much time to be complied with as to make them useless.

　

　Good or bad, or both, the provisions for technology transfer to the Enterprise and to developing countries were simply abolished by the implementation agreement of 1994⁴⁶ which overrides the provisions of Part XI and the pertinent Annexes of the Convention. While the legality of this “Agreement” has been questioned, the prospects for sea-bed mining have changed so drastically since the ⟩Seventies when Part XI was drafted, that this Part, with or without the Implementation Agreement, is to some extent obsolete. The mandate and functions of the Sea-bed Authority need to be reconsidered, through an “evolutionary approach” as suggested by the Implementation Agreement

　

　For various reasons, the future of commercial sea-bed mining seems to be rather indeterminate. Manganese nodule mining, the original raison d=etre of the Authority, has been postponed indefinitely; the mining of sea-floor massive sulphides (SMS) appeared to be closer at hand, but even this is still in an initial phase of research and development. Other, most exciting discoveries have been and continue to be made at a fast pace (genetic resources, especially micro-organisms such as bacteria; methane hydrates), and new services, such as those provided by the fibre-optic cables crossing the international sea-bed, have been developed. All in all, the scientific, environmental, and economic importance of the deep sea-bed and its subsoil is far more important today, and will become even more so during this new century, than the framers of the Convention could imagine in the ⟩Seventies.⁴⁷ It should be obvious that, if the sea-bed is more important, so must be the Sea-bed Authority. To rise to this challenge, however, the Sea-bed Authority has to adjust its functions to the changed and changing scientific and economic perspectives.

　

　Activities today -- all unregulated, outside of, and with no reference to, the Authority - are focussed on exploration, research and development, and the development of human resources. The challenge is to bring these activities into the scope of the Authority and organize them in a manner that is beneficial to all stake-holders - States, other Convention regimes (e.g., Biodiversity, Climate), and Major Groups. This could be initiated even within the present mandate of the Authority. Articles 143 and 144, which remain valid, would empower the Authority to proceed along these lines.

　

　Over the last twenty years, the International Ocean Institute has done quite a bit of work to develop a methodology.. In cooperation with the Delegation of Austria, a proposal was elaborated and presented to the Preparatory Commission for the International Sea-bed Authority and for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (“the Prepcom”) in 1984 and 1985, for the establishment of a Joint Enterprise for Exploration, Research And Development, JEFERAD, for the exploration of a first mine site for the Authority's Enterprise (“reserved area”). This proposal is part of the Official Record. Of the Prepcom.⁴⁸ A similar proposal was developed by the IOI in cooperation with the Delegation of Colombia, in a series of papers entitled The International Enterprise, 1987-1988.⁴⁹ The purpose of this JEFERAD or International Enterprise would have been the same as that of the Regional Centres for Research and Development in Marine Industrial Technology., that is, cost sharing and reduction, and spreading of risk; creating new and additional funding through generating synergies between public and private investments; enhancing the participation of developing countries. Also structure and funding of projects would be analogous to that of the proposed regional centres. In other words, this kind of Enterprise would be a sort of global EUREKA for the advancement of deep-sea exploration, technology development and development of human resources. The body responsible for the final selection of projects would be the Council of the Authority. Our studies at that time concluded that joint exploration of the mine site would cost about 30 percent less than it would if each Pioneer Investor carried it out independently, in accordance with the obligations as defined by the Convention and Resolution II. The costs for R&D would triple due to duplication of efforts, and the training of personnel in independent and separate programmes could increase training costs by 50 to 100 percent compared to the cost of training in a unified programme.

　

　Today one should add to the purposes of JEFERAD the harmonisation and integration of various Convention regimes: The results of this R&D should not be restricted to the International Sea-bed Authority, it would serve the needs of the Biodiversity and Climate Convention regimes as well. The scope of research therefore would be fairly wide.

　

　In 1998, the IOI thus revised the proposal⁵⁰ to include the Biodiversity Convention regime which now shares the responsibility for the conservation of deep sea-bed biota with the Authority, as well as the Climate Convention regime for which research on the deep-sea hydrates is of fundamental importance, since their destabilisation has important effects on climate change. These regimes now should be co-involved with the study and long-term monitoring of the living resources, including also the micro-fauna (“genetic resources”) and the hydrates in the Area. This revised proposal was discussed informally both with the Authority and with the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The project would certainly quality for co-funding by the GEF under its responsibility for biodiversity in international waters and climate change..

　

　In August, 1999, the International Sea-bed Authority organized a Workshop on Proposed Technologies for Deep-Seabed Mining of Polymetallic Nodules, and this work was resumed in a second workshop on Mineral Resources of the International Seabed Area in June 2000. A beautifully illustrated summary Report of the results of both workshops was released by the Authority in September 2000. . It was gratifying to read in this Report the following:

　

　

　The Report also presents a useful list of recommended cooperative research and concludes with the information that

　

　Currently, the ISA=s Secretariat is working with existing explorers who have exploration contracts and with various government and research organizations to facilitate the initiation of these research projects.

　

　Thus, it appears that a new and productive phase of work is opening for the Authority, an important building block in the emerging local-national-regional-global system of technology cooperation and transfer is falling into place, and the concept of joint technology development is coming into its own under the aegis of the institution which today is the custodian of the concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind.