What, if anything, can seabed mining become?

In this essay I show that a four-decades-old article published in this journal, Professor Rudiger Wolfrum’s ‘The Principle of the Common Heritage of Mankind’, is an important resource for the critique of present arrangements for seabed mining. I revisit this piece on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of this journal’s parent institution, and read it, first, in the context of the long biography of seabed mining and of the styles of scholarship that have accompanied the framing of the UNCLOS seabed regime. Next, building on Professor Wolfrum’s discussion, I unpack how the current regime addresses crucial questions of participation—the rights of states to participate in the common benefit, the rights of UNCLOS non-parties to seabed mining, and the rights of non-state actors such as Indigenous Peoples and future generations who are also among the constituents of (hu)mankind. I argue that, as Wolfrum’s analysis shows, the dissatisfactions with the current regime are long in the making. Moreover, the shortcomings that we may identify from a critical or materialist perspective are echoed by doctrinal and normative assessments. I suggest therefore that we take current challenges to the regime, which come both from within and from without, as an opportunity for reflection—on the regime we want for the future and on what it might take to achieve that regime. In the final section, I offer my own view of a seabed regime that could again become what it once represented: a symbol and catalyst of the post-capitalist future we desperately need.