Sri Lanka’s strategic location within the Indian Ocean typically pulls the nation into the geopolitical rivalry between regional giants India and China. In 2023, for instance, Sri Lanka’s granting of permission for Chinese language analysis vessels to dock in Sri Lanka’s territorial waters met with robust opposition from India. The strain subsequently resulted in Sri Lanka imposing a one-year moratorium for analysis vessels from all nations from coming into into Sri Lanka’s waters.
For India, Chinese language analysis vessels aren’t merely a safety risk. India can be involved about China accessing huge seabed assets within the Indian Ocean. India’s affect on Sri Lanka – being an in depth ally and the closest neighbor – make sure that Sri Lanka’s effort to entry mineral assets on the seafloor is prone to be entangled with geopolitics and regional safety.
These issues are already surfacing with Sri Lanka and India’s pursuits to faucet into huge vital mineral assets within the Indian Ocean, particularly close to the Afanasy Nikitin Seamount (ANS), situated about 1,050 kilometers from the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka and roughly 1,350 km off the Indian coast. A marine mountain ridge spanning roughly 400 km in size, the ANS is enriched in extremely sought-after vital minerals, together with cobalt, nickel, and manganese, that are very important for strategic and cutting-edge tech functions like electrical car batteries and aerospace expertise.
Notably, the seamount is situated in what are at present thought of worldwide waters – however is locked in a maritime dispute involving Sri Lanka and India.
For each nations, these vital mineral assets are of excessive significance. For India, the minerals thought to be situated in the ANS, particularly cobalt, are essential to facilitate the nation’s inexperienced vitality transition. For Sri Lanka, the mineral assets within the ANS are necessary as a possible supply of overseas foreign money.
Sri Lanka has been grappling with critical debt troubles and continues to be recovering from its sovereign default declared in 2022. Even after the debt aid, Sri Lanka’s public debt-to-GDP ratio would stay near 90 %, with nearly half of it being overseas foreign money debt. But Sri Lanka’s exports – a key supply of overseas foreign money – stay low at 19 % of GDP in 2025, down sharply from 39 % in 2000.
Sri Lanka, nevertheless, similar to many World South nations, doesn’t have the intensive capital or superior expertise required to hold out deep seabed exploration. Whether or not mining or just conducting large-scale explorations, deep sea tasks require large-scale preliminary capital funding. The Sri Lankan authorities, with its excessive debt burden, is unable to make such investments. The nation’s personal sector additionally doesn’t have the capability to put money into large-scale tasks like mining the ANS. This implies Sri Lanka would require the help of overseas firms to do any type of vital mineral exploration or mineral processing that requires substantial capital funding upfront.
Plainly Sri Lankan authorities has acknowledged this actuality, regardless of its left-leaning ideology. For instance, on June 23, Sri Lanka’s largest personal sector group, Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, hosted a Mineral Sands Technical Convention and invited the worldwide personal sector to affix fingers in exploring mineral sands in Sri Lanka. Talking on the occasion, Sri Lanka’s Minister of Trade and Entrepreneurship Growth Sunil Handunneththi made it clear that the mineral trade is one in every of focus areas of the federal government. Its mission is to rework Sri Lanka right into a aggressive chief in mineral processing and supporting industries, with an eye fixed towards analysis, innovation, and expert employment era.
Sri Lanka’s Declare, India’s Pushback
Whereas this formidable plan paints an optimistic image about selling Sri Lanka’s vital mineral trade, the truth is more difficult. It’s additionally intertwined with geopolitics, as is seen within the case of the ANS.
The ANS, and its huge unexplored assets, is at present embroiled in a contentious authorized dispute. The talk is centred primarily round a authorized declare by Sri Lanka on its maritime boundary. In 2009, Sri Lanka filed a declare on the U.N. Fee on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) to increase its maritime boundary as much as 350 nautical miles.
The ANS is situated roughly 650 nm off Sri Lanka’s southern coast, manner past the usual 350 nm restrict of the prolonged continental shelf. However within the request Sri Lanka used a particular authorized provision – Annex II of the Remaining Act of the Third U.N. Convention on the Legislation of the Sea – which permits littoral states within the southern elements of the Bay of Bengal, with particular continental shelf situations, to make use of an alternate mathematical technique to attract their shelf boundary. To invoke the clause, states ought to have a continental shelf with thick sedimentary deposits mendacity beneath the continental rise near the shore. Sri Lanka argued that by making use of this technique, the outer restrict of its maritime jurisdiction extends past the 350 nm restrict, to a boundary that features the ANS.
Though Sri Lanka’s geological declare stays to be confirmed, if the CLCS does validate the declare, Sri Lanka’s legally acknowledged maritime seabed jurisdiction can be prolonged and the ANS would legally fall below Sri Lanka’s nationwide jurisdiction, stopping different states from exploring the seabed with out Sri Lanka’s consent.
On the time of the preliminary CLCS submitting in 2009, India didn’t specific any formal objection to Sri Lanka’s declare. However a mixture of home pursuits and resource-driven geopolitics shifted India’s stance on the ANS in 2022. In 2021, attending the COP26 summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced India’s aim to chop its emissions to internet zero by 2070. The general public goal will increase the demand for clear vitality functions corresponding to electrical automobiles – in flip driving India’s seek for important minerals, together with cobalt.
New Delhi’s overseas coverage shift was additionally fueled by China’s rising maritime reconnaissance within the Indian Ocean. China has performed intensive expeditions within the Indian Ocean by way of a number of analysis vessels, which garnered heavy criticism from India and the US. A number of of those vessels, most notably the Chinese language analysis vessel Shi Yan 6, docked in Colombo Port additional fueling protest by each worldwide and native actors. Because of this, Sri Lanka declared a one-year moratorium on maritime analysis vessels from all nations from coming into its waters, starting January 1, 2024. The yearlong moratorium concluded by the tip of 2024.
In its 2022 criticism, India opined that Sri Lanka’s declare prejudiced India’s strategic and financial pursuits and formally expressed its protest by way of a be aware verbale requesting the Fee on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to not think about or qualify Sri Lanka’s pending declare. This instantly put the CLCS on maintain from evaluating Sri Lanka’s submission, because the fee is strictly forbidden from contemplating or evaluating a request if there’s an ongoing dispute associated to the claimed space, except the events involved have given specific consent (Annex I Rule 5(a)). For the reason that CLCS is a scientific fee and not using a authorized mandate, it can’t proceed to contemplate and consider the declare till the dispute is settled, leading to a authorized impasse. It’s noteworthy that along with India, Maldives has additionally disputed Sri Lanka’s declare for the prolonged seabed.
In 2024, two years after Sri Lanka’s sovereign declare was successfully frozen, India utilized to the Worldwide Seabed Authority (ISA) for a license to conduct mineral exploration on the Afanasy Nikitin Seamount. The ISA, headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica is the U.N.-mandated worldwide physique with oversight of the worldwide seabed, generally known as the Space. The Space is legally declared as a standard heritage of mankind that no single sovereign state can completely declare. Any requests to conduct exploration, mining and extraction of assets within the Space must be permitted by the ISA below a strict authorized framework.
India’s software to the ISA, submitted by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, is for an unbiased 15-year exploration license overlaying an space of three,000 sq. kilometers of the ANS. That is the utmost space the ISA permits below a single exploration licence for cobalt-rich crusts.
Nevertheless, the ISA can’t course of India’s licence request as a result of the ANS at present has an ambiguous authorized standing. It’s unclear whether or not it falls below Sri Lanka’s prolonged continental shelf declare or the worldwide seabed. If Sri Lanka’s declare is legally acknowledged, the ANS is not going to fall below the worldwide seabed, successfully eradicating the ISA’s authority over it and rendering India’s software void. The ISA is subsequently unable to behave till the authorized dispute is resolved.
Authorized Stalemate
The twin bottleneck of the CLCS being unable to judge Sri Lanka’s declare for an prolonged seabed because of the maritime dispute initiated by India and the ISA being unable to grant an exploration licence to India resulting from undefined maritime boundaries has created a authorized stalemate stopping both state from securing their entry to the ANS.
Technically, Sri Lanka can legally problem India’s dispute in a world authorized tribunal just like the Worldwide Tribunal on Legislation of the Sea (ITLOS). There are authorized precedents for such cases, just like the maritime dispute involving Bangladesh and Myanmar in 2012. On this case Myanmar blocked Bangladesh’s declare for an prolonged continental shelf utilizing the identical dispute rule. Bangladesh later sued Myanmar at ITLOS, which dominated in Bangladesh’s favor, prompting CLCS to just accept Bangladesh’s declare. Nevertheless, there’s an extra hurdle that forestalls Sri Lanka from in search of an analogous authorized treatment.
Beneath Article 298 of the U.N. Conference on the Legislation of the Sea (UNCLOS), when a state get together ratifies the conference, it’s allowed to declare that it’ll not settle for a ruling by a world courtroom associated to maritime boundaries, maritime army actions, or these associated to disputes being debated within the U.N. Safety Council. Since India has made this declaration, Sri Lanka can’t maintain India legally certain by a world courtroom ruling pertaining to the ANS.
That mentioned, Sri Lanka may compel India to take part in “obligatory conciliation” (Annex V), the place an appointed fee evaluates the disputing claims. Nevertheless, the conciliation fee can solely make suggestions that aren’t legally binding. Which means whereas Sri Lanka can deliver India to a negotiation desk, it will probably’t compel India to just accept the end result.
Due to this fact, till the dispute is settled in a manner that’s acceptable to each events, the ANS can be handled as a disputed territory and provisionally thought of as part of the worldwide seabed with an ambiguous authorized identification.
A Manner Ahead
One different to resolve this authorized stalemate is for Sri Lanka and India to kind a bilateral partnership for the joint improvement of the ANS. UNCLOS stresses that disputing states shall make each effort to enter into provisional preparations of a sensible nature (Article 83). In such a negotiation, Sri Lanka has a big bargaining chip as a result of with out cooperation from Colombo, India’s licensing request at ISA will stay unprocessed. Utilizing this vulnerability, Sri Lanka can successfully leverage India right into a partnership over the ANS and immediate India for a deal that features capital funding and expertise switch to Sri Lanka.
Equally, there isn’t any strict authorized provision limiting Sri Lanka from coming into into simultaneous partnerships with third states corresponding to China or the US. Nevertheless, the methods wherein New Delhi interacted with Sri Lanka in latest previous means that India is proactively engaged on rising its financial footprints in Sri Lanka, by way of offering new loans, investments and different types of company.
Having India co-managing the ANS may subsequently complicate an already fierce geoeconomic competitors. Though there isn’t any report of India and Sri Lanka having bilateral negotiations for a joint partnership, it’s extremely doubtless India would make sure that such partnership has particular clauses to maintain its rivals removed from the seabed. It’ll dissuade Sri Lanka from forming partnerships with a 3rd nation.
