48 



Your presentation is a classic example of how the weight of 

 argument is a far more persuasive and effective means of advanc- 

 ing a cause than loud and abrasive martyrdom. 



I personally admire your stand during and after the negotiation 

 of this document. 



Chairman Zablocki. Mr. Bingham. 



Mr. Bingham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



I would like to return to the subject of what the mining compa- 

 nies would do if there were no treaty and clarify one point. 



You said earlier that if there is no treaty the mining companies 

 would not invest. Would that still be true if there were the kind of 

 reciprocal agreement worked out with the other industrial coun- 

 tries that you referred to at the end of your statement? 



Mr. Richardson. Yes. I believe the answer to that is clear. They 

 would not invest under reciprocal legislation of the kind that has 

 now been adopted by the United States and the Federal Republic of 

 Germany. 



They would not do so even if a handful of other countries, for 

 example, France, Japan, The Netherlands, Belgium, were to enact 

 similar legislation. 



Mr. Bingham. Would you explain why you think they would 

 make that judgment? 



Mr. Richardson. There are basically two reasons, both of which 

 would affect the judgments of boards of directors as well as the 

 lenders to prospective investors. 



The first is that the rights to a particular area of the seabed 

 conferred by the reciprocal legislation would have to be recognized 

 only by the countries that had enacted that legislation. No such 

 country, including the United States, asserts as a legal position 

 that it can confer rights to engage in seabed mining that are 

 required to be recognized by any other country except a country 

 that chose to recognize them, and as to that proposition there is no 

 dispute whatever. 



The result, therefore, is that any other country can charter a 

 mining company to mine in the same area, and there are quite a 

 few countries in the world today that have plenty of money for the 

 purpose if they choose to use it. 



The consequence, therefore, is that a mining company estab- 

 lished by some OPEC country, for example, could wait to see where 

 an American company began to conduct seabed mining and then in 

 effect piggyback on the investment made by the American or 

 German company or whoever it might be in identifying the area as 

 one with rich beds of exploitable nodules. 



The second reason is that so few countries maintain the position 

 that there is a right under international law to engage in seabed 

 mining. This fact inevitably creates the potential for a vast amount 

 of legal harrassment and litigation over the assertion of such a 

 right by one of the reciprocal countries. 



There are many ways in which such litigation might arise in the 

 courts of other countries. It would be likely, at some stage, to 

 culminate in the International Court of Justice, and a measure of 

 the risk is one's guess as to what would be the decision of the 

 International Court of Justice. I know many lawyers who would 



