The Interaction Between the BBNJ Agreement and the International Deep Sea Mining Regime: More Questions than Answers?

As the scope of the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) overlaps with what is governed by the international deep sea mining regime, interaction between these two frameworks is inevitable, but the nature and implications of this interaction remain largely unclear. The fact that the ratification process of the BBNJ Agreement coincides with the final phase in the development of rules and procedures for commercial exploitation activities in the field of deep sea mining only raises more questions and speculation. Marine environmental protection is a key component in the regulation of deep sea mining, but the rules and measures provided by the BBNJ Agreement might introduce significant changes that alter the legal context in which the deep sea mining regime currently operates, despite the BBNJ Agreement's overall ambition to promote coherence and the general precept not to undermine other legal instruments and relevant bodies. In order to unravel this ambiguous relationship, this article unpacks the principle not to undermine and applies it to the deep sea mining context, thereby demonstrating the issues associated with its interpretation and the consequences this may have. To assess some of the concrete implications in a more pragmatic manner, the article also zooms in on a number of questions and scenarios within the field of area-based management tools, whose relevance will only increase with time.