About the Book

The Book offers an innovative approach to the recovery of areas degraded by international deep-sea mining, which considers the feasibility of combining mining activity in this geography (and its inherent duty to recover these post-mined areas) in apparent antinomy with its other present and future potential uses.

The Book begins by identifying and explaining the legal norms that allow mining exploration in these areas and the rights and obligations in mining exploration concomitant with other uses thereof, based on the analysis of the Duty to Recover Degraded Areas from these operations. It reveals an antinomy in international law, namely, the compatibility of degraded areas and their various present and future uses with international deep-sea mining.

The freedom to mine these areas could destroy the least impacted biome on the planet and undermine the international legal system represented by the Cultural Heritage of Humanity and the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS III”). The Recovery of Degraded Areas is an obligation of mining and, as such, requires structural changes in the reading of UNCLOS III, either by recognizing other international roles beyond those related to sovereignty, or by projecting the law into the future; or by rereading these activities in light of international environmental law and its instruments.

About the author

Antonio Elian Lawand Junior is an Adjunct Professor at the Charleston School of Law, Charleston, SC, USA and an Associate Professor at the Maritime Law Academy, Santos, SP, Brazil. He is a Visiting Professor at Verbo Jurídico, São Paulo, SP, Brazil. He is a member of the “Energy and Environment” research group at the Catholic University of Santos in Brazil and the Center for Strategic Studies and Planning of the Marine Space-CEDEPEM of the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil and an Associate Researcher at the EXEA Museum. He is a lawyer in the State of São Paulo, Brazil.

Antonio Elian Lawand Junior holds a Doctorate in International Environmental Law, a Master's in Environmental Law, a Bachelor's in Law (Catholic University of Santos, UniSantos, Brazil), and a postgraduate degree in Higher Education — Pedagogy (University of Tampere, Finland).

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