Unclosure: The international law of seabed mining and the systemic cycles of capital accumulation

Abstract

The growing electric vehicle industry is heavily reliant on minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper. As corporations scramble to access vast deposits of those minerals lying in the ocean floor, the international law of seabed mining has come under scrutiny. This article situates negotiations concerning that law, which took place between 1973 and 1994, within Giovanni Arrighi’s historiographical framework of the systemic cycles of capital accumulation. It argues that the legal regime in question was shaped by the Reagan administration, as part of a strategy to solve a profitability crisis affecting US nationals. While temporarily diverting wealth towards American financial markets, however, the legal arrangements that the United States imposed could not affect the dynamics of capital accumulation on a global scale.