Oceans and the Law: breakfast roundtable series of the Faculty of Law, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington

In the brief 60 years of space flight, humanity has sent over 60,000 space objects and 1 million pieces of smaller debris into orbit around the planet.  This has created the risk of a legal and physical log-jam in space.  The congestion and space-junk problems are projected to become even more acute as the space race broadens its participants.

During the 29th annual session of the International Seabed Authority (“ISA”), Malta, Tuvalu, Honduras, Guatemala and Austria declared their support for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining.  To date, now over thirty States have called for a halt in the exploitation of the deep seabed minerals.  These calls come as the ISA struggles to adopt a final set of regulations on mining exploitation.

On 30 May 2024, the European Council adopted decisions enabling the European Union (“EU”) to denounce (the proper international law term for ‘withdraw from’)  the Energy Charter Treaty (“ECT”). 

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant gaps in the global health system, leading to immense human and economic losses.  In response, the World Health Organization (“WHO”) and its member States decided to draft a comprehensive international treaty—the Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response Accord.