时代周刊:散落在太平洋深处的黑矿石--解锁气候密码(6)（在线收听）

The 168-member-country bureaucracy was tasked with organizing, regulating and controlling all mineral-related activities in the international seabed area “for the benefi t of mankind as a whole,” with proceeds shared among those who developed the resources and the rest of the international community.

这个由168个国家组成的官僚机构的任务是，“为了全人类的利益”，组织、管理和控制国际海底区域所有与矿物有关的活动，收益由资源开发者和国际社会的其他成员共享。

The treaty gives the ISA two almost mutually exclusive mandates, says Aline Jaeckel, a specialist on international seabed-mining law at Potsdam University’s Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Germany:

德国波茨坦大学高级可持续发展研究所（IASS）的国际海底采矿法专家Aline Jaeckel说，该条约赋予国际海底管理局两项几乎相互排斥的任务：

one to administer the mineral resources for the good of mankind, and the other to protect the marine environment from any harm from mining.

一项是为人类的福祉管理矿产资源，另一项是保护海洋环境免受采矿的伤害。

“They are almost impossible to comply with because any mining will have environmental consequences.

“这是难以遵守的，因为任何采矿都会产生环境后果。

There is no way around that. So the question then becomes, How much harm is acceptable?”

这是没办法的事。因此，问题就变成了，我们可以接受多大程度的伤害？”

Those confl icting mandates may explain why the ISA has yet to issue a single commercial mining permit— and why, in its nearly three decades of existence, it hasn’t even agreed on mining regulations, let alone how revenue from the globally owned resource should be distributed.

这些相互矛盾的任务可能解释了为什么国际海底管理局还没有颁发一个商业采矿许可证--以及为什么在其存在的近三十年中，甚至没有就采矿法规达成一致，更不用说来自全球拥有的资源的收入应该如何分配。

So far, the ISA has awarded 18 exploration contracts in the CCZ to contractors representing China, Russia and the U.K., along with several other European, Asian and island nation-states.

到目前为止，国际海底管理局已经将CC区的18份勘探合同授予了代表中国、俄罗斯和英国的承包商，以及其他一些欧洲和亚洲国家，以及其他几个欧洲、亚洲和岛屿国家美国。

The U.S., which has not yet ratified UNCLOS, tacitly abides by it but has not sought any mining contracts.

美国尚未批准《联合国海洋法公约》，但默默遵守了该公约，但没有寻求达成任何采矿合同。

Once the mining regulations are formally established, exploration-contract holders can apply for commercial-mining permits.

一旦采矿条例正式确立，勘探合同持有人可以申请商业采矿许可证。

According to the ISA’s mandate, mining revenue from those concessions should be equitably shared among members.

根据国际海底管理局的授权，来自这些特许权的采矿收入应在成员之间公平分享。

Yet industry watchers expect that the organization will establish a royalty fee somewhere from 2% to 6% when it next meets in Kingston, Jamaica.

然而，行业观察人士预计，当该组织在牙买加金斯敦举行下一次会议时，将确定2%至6%的特许权使用费。

A meeting scheduled to take place in July was postponed indefinitely because of the pandemic.

原定于7月举行的会议因新冠疫情而被无限期推迟。

In 2019, a group of 47 ISA members from Africa calculated that the proposed payment regime could lead to a return to member nations of less than $100,000 a year per country, hardly enough to “foster healthy development of the world economy,” as stipulated by the UNCLOS directive to the ISA.

2019年，一个由47个来自非洲的国际海底管理局成员组成的小组计算出，拟议的付款制度可能让每个成员国每年的收入不到10万美元，几乎不足以 “促进世界经济的健康发展”，正如《联合国海洋法公约》对国际海底管理局的指示所规定的。