Development of the Legal Framework for Deep Sea Mining in the Pacific Islands States

Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are making a great effort to introduce legal infrastructure associated with deep sea mining in order to balance their obligations to protect the environment and further develop their economy. However, the extent and scale of this progress related to legal infrastructure vary country to country. To examine the characteristics of these legislations, this study focuses on the precautionary approach. In the context of the Cook Islands and PNG, the laws on deep sea mining were analyzed in terms of how the precautionary approach has been embodied into the rules and remedial measures. For this purpose, the paper applies elaborated works in the field of international environmental law including the one by Jaeckel on the precautionary principle in the ISA.