The currents of the law of the sea remain volatile depending on the geopolitical trajectories that it faces. When Grotius crafted the term Mare Liberum to legitimize the rights to navigation of the Dutch, it certainly equated with the complex trade aspirations of the Dutch East India Company to increase their profit. The whole gamut of international law is more or less driven by the realities stemming from the political sphere, and this reality stands as a perennial truth. It is in this context that we should look at ongoing legal entanglement for the Afanasy Nikitin seamount in the Central Indian Ocean, as it discloses the blatant geopolitical realities that Sri Lanka cannot vanquish.
The Afanasy Nikitin Seamount
Geographically, the Afanasy Nikitin seamount is a structural feature in the central Indian Ocean, located nearly 3000 km away from the Indian subcontinent. It is named after the Russian merchant who visited India in the 16th century, and a set of Soviet scientists discovered the larger territory of the seamount in 1958 during the early naval explorations carried out by the Soviet Union.
It is assumed to be an apt ground for a vast array of minerals such as cobalt, nickel, manganese, and copper, which are waiting to be discovered. For any actual exploration to happen, the interested countries should make an application to the International Seabed Authority, an autonomous organization established under the United Nation’s Law of the Sea Convention.
Claims for the Exploration of the Seamount
The conceptual framework behind applying for the International Seabed Authority arose from the acumen of the late Shirley Amerasinghe, an old-school genius from the distinguished Ceylon Civil Service who chaired the International Convention on Law of the Sea in 1978. When drafting UNCLOS, Amerasinghe recognized that the provisions on the delimitation of the continental shelf in Article 76 of the draft convention could potentially lead to unfair outcomes for Sri Lanka’s continental shelf.
Based on the exclusive rights provided by the international law of the sea convention, India made a formal application to the Jamaican-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) for seeking approval to explore the Afanasy Nikitin Seamount, which is an obvious pretext to uncover the rich cobalt resources within the seamount.
The question that comes to the fore is whether the Afanasy Nikitin Seamount is located within a territory claimed by Sri Lanka as its continental shelf. Colombo was pleased with ISA to refrain from allowing New Delhi to explore the seamount until Sri Lanka’s request for the continental shelf claim gets approved by the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
Sri Lanka applied for its claim for the continental shelf in 2009 under the UNCLOS of 1982 for the extension of its continental shelf. In the first instance, New Delhi’s response to its neighbor was a positive one, as India’s permanent mission to the UN acknowledged it in May 2010 without an objection, which later changed in 2022.
“The consideration and qualification by the Commission of the submission made by Sri Lanka would prejudice the rights of India over the parts of the continental shelf, as India has the right to make further submissions under the Statement of Understanding. Therefore, in accordance with paragraph 5(a) of Annex I of the Rules of Procedure of the Commission, the Government of the Republic of India requests the Commission not to ‘consider and qualify’ the submission made by Sri Lanka.”
The letter issued on the 22nd of October 2022 by India’s Permanent Mission to the UN states
Current Dynamics
The current change of perceptions has its footprints in the complex geopolitical tensions looming in the Indian Ocean region. In particular, the gradual presence of Chinese research vessels challenging the traditional Indian-centric security architecture in the region makes a stir in the highest echelons in New Delhi. Perhaps from a vantage point, India’s claim to the Afanasy Nikitin seamount is rooted in New Delhi’s ambitions to deter any possible Chinese presence in the region.
China’s presence in the Indian Ocean has given a tense time to India; mainly, the way it influenced small island nations like Sri Lanka and the Maldives proves Delhi’s fear that China may exploit the seamount at an unprecedented level. The internal political dynamics within India cannot be ignored, as they bolster every foreign policy decision that New Delhi makes. Unlike the Congress government, which was in power when Sri Lanka applied for the extended constitutional shelf in 2009, the present government, headed by the BJP, aggrandizes a typical realist position in its foreign policy, in which India’s concerns become prime.
The crème de la crème of the whole problem is the value of cobalt as a rarer mineral, and the Afanasy Nikitin seamount is assumed to be a breeding ground for cobalt. According to the prediction made by the International Economics Forum, the demand for cobalt will be increased by 2030 due to the adoption of electronic vehicles. In that case, cobalt can generate enormous wealth for its owning parties, and countries that intend to explore cobalt should have the sophistication to complete their exploitations.
As a country embittered by the economic crisis and internal political chaos in a decadent system, Sri Lanka lacks the technical-financial capabilities to explore the Afanasy Nikitin seamount. But such a lacuna does not open a path to another country to exploit it at one’s cost. All in all, the entanglement over Afanasy Nikitin Seamount reveals the tip of the iceberg that encompasses the whole Indian Ocean. It resonates with India’s fear of losing its grip over the Indian Ocean as the Chinese presence grows. India might have gazed at the seamount to mitigate Chinese infiltration, but it clearly contains economic aspirations, too.
If you want to submit your articles and/or research papers, please check the Submissions page.
The views and opinions expressed in this article/paper are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Paradigm Shift.
Punsara Amarasinghe is a post-doctoral researcher affiliated with Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, Pisa. He is a PhD holder in Public International Law from the Institute of Law, Politics and Development at Scuola Superiore Sant Anna (Sant Anna School for Advanced Studies) in Pisa, Italy. He holds LL.M. from the South Asian University, New Delhi, and completed his undergraduate studies in law at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
He completed another master's degree in international relations from the HSE, Moscow. He has held two visiting research fellowships at the Global Legal Studies Centre at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Sciences PO, Paris. He was affiliated with the Minerva Center for Strategic Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem for a brief period in 2019.