The moratorium on deep-sea mining movement as a strategic practice of informal self-governance

Abstract This article examines the development of the movement advocating for a deep-sea mining (DSM) moratorium from the perspective of global governance and regulation theories. This perspective may provide new insights on the development of the legal rules and on the social-political interactions that promote these developments. The governance framework of DSM is a network of formal and informal (i.e., non-governmental or non-legal) rules, actors, and institutions, that regulate exploration and exploitation of the international seabed (the Area). The article borrows the concept of ‘self-regulation’, arguing that the DSM moratorium movement can be considered a practice of what this article coins as ‘informal self-governance’ – that is, the intentional and informal practice of restriction (by informal actors or in the absence of formal rules) designed to achieve certain goals, that may not be achieved through formal processes of law-making. In the case of DSM moratorium, these goals are environmental protection and perceived negative distributional outcomes – i.e., inequitable or imbalanced distribution of benefits from DSM. This article focuses on distributional outcomes as this issue has yet to gain sufficient attention as a justification for the DSM moratorium.