About ISA

• The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is an autonomous international organization established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 1994 Agreement relating to the Implementation of UNCLOS (1994 Agreement).
• ISA is the organization through which States Parties to UNCLOS organize and control all mineral-resources-related activities in the Area for the benefit of humankind as a whole. 
• In so doing, ISA has the mandate to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment from harmful effects that may arise from deep-seabed-related activities.
• ISA, which has its headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica, came into existence in 1994, upon the entry into force of UNCLOS. 
• It became fully operational as an autonomous international organization in 1996, when it took over the premises and facilities in Kingston, Jamaica, previously used by the United Nations Kingston Office for the Law of the Sea.
• In accordance with UNCLOS, Article 156(2), all States Parties to UNCLOS are ipso facto members of ISA. As of 2023, ISA has 169 Members, including 168 Member States (including India) and the European Union.
• The Area and its resources are the common heritage of humankind. The Area covers around 54 per cent of the total area of the world’s oceans.

Why in News?

• India has applied to the International Seabed Authority (ISBA), Jamaica, for rights to explore two vast tracts in the Indian Ocean seabed that aren’t part of its jurisdiction. 
• The application to explore one of these regions, a cobalt-rich crust long known as the Afanasy Nikitin Seamount (AN Seamount), is a gambit by India. Rights to the region have already been claimed by Sri Lanka under a separate set of laws, but India’s application is part-motivated by reports of vessels by China undertaking reconnaissance in the same region.
• The AN Seamount is a structural feature (400 km-long and 150 km-wide) in the Central Indian Basin, located about 3,000 km away from India’s coast. 
• From an oceanic depth of about 4,800 km it rises to about 1,200 metre and — as surveys from about two decades establish — rich in deposits of cobalt, nickel, manganese and copper. 
• For any actual extraction to happen, interested explorers — in this case, countries — must apply first for an exploration licence to the ISBA.
• These rights are specific to areas that are part of the open ocean, meaning ocean — whose air, surface and sea-bed — where no countries can claim sovereignty. Around 60% of the world’s seas are open ocean and though believed to be rich in a variety of mineral wealth, the costs and challenges of extraction are prohibitive. Currently no country has commercially extracted resources from open oceans.
• However, another UNCLOS-linked body, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which decides on the limits of a country’s continental shelf, may impede India’s exploration ambitions.

Exclusive rights 

• Countries have exclusive rights up to 200 nautical miles, and its underlying sea-bed from their borders. Some ocean-bound states may have a natural stretch of land, connecting their border and the edge of the deep ocean that extends beyond this 200, as part of their so-called continental shelf. 
• To claim so, however, a country must give a detailed scientific rationale, complete with underwater maps and surveys to show this unbroken land-connect to a scientific commission appointed by the ISBA. 
• If such a claim is approved, then such a country will have primacy to explore and potentially exploit the living and non-living resources in the region.
• Normally, claims to the continental shelf do not extend beyond 350 nautical miles from their coast. However, there is a provision under which countries along the Bay of Bengal can apply a different set of criteria to make claims on the extent of their continental shelf. 
• Using this, Sri Lanka has claimed up to 500 nautical miles. Whether they are actually awarded so we have to wait and see but India has staked a claim for exploration because we have noted Chinese presence. If we don’t at least stake a claim now, then this could have consequences in the future.
• If a region isn’t formally classified as being part of a country’s continental shelf, then it is considered ‘high sea’ and open to any country to approach the ISBA and ask permission for exploration.
• Like Sri Lanka, India too has staked a claim for its continental shelf up to 350 nautical miles from its border but has yet to be awarded so. It has previously garnered exploration rights to two other large basins in the Central India Ocean and has undertaken surveys.

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/sensing-china-threat-india-joins-race-to-mine-new-sea-patch/article67995397.ece#:~:text=Rights%20to%20the%20region%20have,identified%2C%20confirmed%20to%20The%20Hindu.