Sec. 801. Law of the Sea Convention
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Congress makes the following findings: As a party to the Law of the Sea Convention, the United States would be a powerful voting Council member of the International Seabed Authority, a body that is critical to negotiations regarding deep seabed mining, which is a practice that could have significant potential climate, environmental, and economic impacts. Being party to the Convention and holding membership on the International Seabed Authority is in the United States’ best interests in regard to competition with other countries over future rare earth element resources found on the sea floor.
Without being party to the Convention, the United States cannot play a role in negotiating and providing international legitimacy to claims to the Arctic, an area that is rapidly becoming more accessible due to climate change. As a party to the Convention, the United States would be better able to participate in negotiations regarding the management of high seas fish stocks, migratory fish stocks, and marine mammals, which will become more important as the climate continues to change and species shift.
The Convention imposes minimum requirements for ocean protections; the United States is already meeting or exceeding those requirements and could therefore positively influence international marine conservation by being party to the Convention. A diverse array of bipartisan Presidents and lawmakers, military leaders, industry stakeholders, and environmental organizations support ratification of the Convention, finding that it is in the United States’ best economic, political, and environmental interest to ratify.
It is the sense of Congress that— the United States Senate should give its advice and consent to accession to the Law of the Sea Convention, adopted by the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in December 1982 and entered into force in November 1994, to establish a treaty regime to govern activities on, over, and under the world’s oceans; the Law of the Sea Convention builds on four 1958 Law of the Sea conventions to which the United States is a party, namely— the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone; the Convention on the High Seas; the Convention on the Continental Shelf; and the Convention on Fishing and Conservation of the Living Resources of the High Seas; the Law of the Sea Convention and an associated 1994 agreement relating to implementation of the treaty were transmitted to the Senate on October 6, 1994; in the absence of advice and consent from the Senate, the United States is not a party to the Convention nor to the associated 1994 agreement; becoming a party to the Law of the Sea Convention would give the United States standing to participate in discussions relating to the treaty and thereby improve the ability of the United States to intervene as a full party in disputes relating to navigational rights and defend United States interpretations of the treaty’s provisions; and becoming a party to the treaty would improve the ability of the United States to achieve the environmental, social, and economic purposes of supporting the implementation and enforcement of international fisheries agreements and the protection of highly migratory species under the Magnuson Stevens Act, the Shark Conservation Act, and the High Seas Driftnet Fishing Moratorium Protection Act.