The Indian submission to explore the cobalt-rich ferro manganese ANS mount can have consequences for bilateral relations over the short, medium and long terms
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Revived news reportage on a long-pending bilateral issue between India and Sri Lanka, coupled with a relatively new one, has the potential to strain bilateral relations between India and Sri Lanka, if not handled with care through diplomatic channels. The two issues are inter-linked, or, rather, both are born out of the same one, and has the potential to blow up as yet another maritime issue between the two South Asian neighbours.
At the centre of it is the January 2024 Indian submission to the International Seabed Authority (ISBA), located in Kingston, Jamaica, to permit exploration of the cobalt-rich ferro-manganese crust in what oceanographers and geologists know as the ‘Afanasy Nikitin Sea-mount’ (ANS). At present, ANS is located in international waters, 1050 km south-east of the Sri Lankan coast and 1350 km off the Indian coast, in the Central Indian Ocean.
Sri Lanka has contested India’s request with the ISBA, citing long-pending clearance from the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) for fixing the outer-limits of the nation’s continental shelf.
Sri Lanka has contested India’s request with the ISBA, citing long-pending clearance from the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) for fixing the outer-limits of the nation’s continental shelf. The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry said that “recent speculation in the public domain relating to ceding of Sri Lanka’s sovereign rights related to these matters is not based on the factual situation in this regard.” The Indian High Commission in Colombo, citing the Sri Lankan statement, has reacted likewise.
The ISBA’s mandate is to consider and approve applications from member-States for undertaking deep-sea exploration in international waters, pursuant to Part XI Section 4 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). India made the application for ANS exploration in January 2024. Against this, the Sri Lankan submission to the UNCLCS for extending the nation’s continental shelf beyond the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), extending up to 200 nautical miles, was made as far back as 8 May 2009—incidentally, less than a fortnight ahead of the three-decades long ‘ethnic war’ in the country.
The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry recalled how in terms of UNCLOS’s Article 76, all coastal States are entitled to claim an extended continental shelf beyond the 200 nautical miles Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). As a coastal State, Sri Lanka, the statement said, presented its technical and scientific data and other material, before the UNCLCS, under the special method contained in the Statement of Understanding (SoU), in respect of States in the Southern part of the Bay of Bengal. The procedure is contained in Article 4 of Annex II UNCLCS.
The statement said that the UNCLCS appointed a Sub-Commission to consider Colombo’s submission in October 2016 and the two sides have held several rounds of discussions since. However, the UNCLCS is yet to come up with its recommendations with regard to Sri Lanka’s submission. If anything, the Sri Lankan submission is pending a final decision by UNCLCS, owing to India’s counter-submission, again made a while back. The way forward in this regard is being pursued through diplomatic channels, the Foreign Ministry statement said in Colombo.
The Afanasy Nikitin Sea-mount, or ANS, is a 400-km long and 150-km wide, undersea mountainous feature in the equatorial Indian Ocean. It comprises a main plateau rising 1,200 metres above the surrounding ocean floor at a depth of 4,800 metres, and secondary elevated sea-mount highs, two of which lie at 1,600 metre and 2,050 metre water depths.
The slow-paced Sri Lankan coastal shelf claims and India’s objections/counter-claims assumed greater urgency when the Earth System Science Organization (ESSO), an autonomous institute of the Ministry of Earth Sciences of the Government of India, submitted an application to the Secretary-General of the ISBA on 18 January 2024, seeking approval for a 15-year plan of work for the exploration of the cobalt-rich Afanasy Nikitin Sea-mount in the Central Indian Ocean. According to reports, the ESSO also deposited an application fee of US $500,000 to the ISBA.
According to the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry statement, the cobalt-rich ferro-manganese crusts lie entirely within an area claimed by Colombo under its continental shelf submission. Hence, Colombo has brought these ‘considerations to the attention of the ISBA and requested to withhold this matter’ until final recommendations are made on Sri Lanka’s submission through the UNCLCS process. “The ISBA is following applicable procedures in this regard and the matter is ongoing,” the Sri Lankan statement said.
Incidentally, the Afanasy-Nikitin Sea-mount is not the only deep-sea region in the Indian Ocean that India is interested in for undertaking mining for minerals. There is also the Carlsberg Ridge, running parallel to Seychelles, which is rich in poly-metallic nodules, with commercially viable quantities of at least three metals, namely, copper, lead and zinc.
It is anybody’s guess if New Delhi’s urgency in the matter owed (also) to the frequent forays by adversarial China’s PLA-Navy’s research vessels in these parts over the past three years. However, there has been no indication, at least as yet in the public domain, about China promising to support Sri Lanka’s continental shelf claims in international fora – and also later help in the exploration and commercial exploitation of the cobalt crusts if and when Colombo got a favourable verdict in the matter. On land-based mining, China has undertaken such work in Afghanistan, Myanmar and across Africa.
It is not known if the first two Chinese vessels in these parts of the Indian Ocean, in 2021 and 2022, looked specifically into Carlsberg Ridge and/or ANS, as there was nothing official at the time about India seeking ISBA clearance for deep-sea exploration in these two sites. The third Chinese vessel berthed in Maldives twice within a month earlier this year, after Colombo, almost overnight, imposed a one-year ban on foreign research vessels docking in Sri Lankan ports.
It is not known if the first two Chinese vessels in these parts of the Indian Ocean, in 2021 and 2022, looked specifically into Carlsberg Ridge and/or ANS, as there was nothing official at the time about India seeking ISBA clearance for deep-sea exploration in these two sites.
In Japan recently, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ali Sabry talked about lifting the year-long ban on foreign research vessels at the end of one year, on 1 January 2025, thus facilitating the freedom for Chinese foreign vessels to return. The minister clarified that under UNCLOS, the nation cannot be selective in the matter. It is another matter that a final decision may rest with the new government after the presidential polls in October.
For its part, the Maldivian government of President Mohamed Muizzu, too, claimed that the Chinese vessel, when it was allowed visitation rights, was allowed only to re-stock goods and rotate personnel and did not undertake any research work. The fact that the vessel was in these parts for that full month and more does not exclude the possibility of it having undertaken research work in ANS and Carlsberg Ridge, as by then India has moved the ISBA. If true, Indian strategic thinkers may have to revise their view that the Chinese research vessels were ‘spying (only) on’ Indian strategic assets, on land.
Incidentally, in Sri Lanka, the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), considered to be the (more) militant breakaway faction of the centre-left Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), has claimed that neighbouring India was ‘brazenly exploiting the continuing political and economic crisis in the country’, by seeking cobalt-exploration in an Ocean area that Sri Lanka has claimed to be a part of its extended continental shelf. The FSP spokesperson also referred to India reportedly reaching an agreement with Taiwan to undertake the exploration amidst rising tensions with China.
In an election year, both the core issue and more so the peripheral criticism targeting India by a breakaway section of what once used to be an anti-India JVP may leave the parent party in a quandary. The JVP sees itself as a possible government-in-waiting ahead of the presidential polls more than at any time since democratisation of the once-militant party in the nineties.
In an election year, both the core issue and more so the peripheral criticism targeting India by a breakaway section of what once used to be an anti-India JVP may leave the parent party in a quandary.
The JVP and the FSP were known to have competed with each other at the historic ‘Aragalaya’ mass protests that overthrew democratically-elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksas in 2022. With the FSP too declaring its intention to field a presidential candidate, any competitive India-bashing by the JVP could throw up a larger political spiral, in which traditionally democratic candidates, including incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe and the SJB Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa, too, may be caught.
This can have consequences for bilateral relations over the short, medium and long terms, that too at a time when the two nations are seen working to control the damage caused by the revival of the ‘Kachchatheevu issue’ as an internal politico-electoral affair in India, accentuated by the death of a Sri Lanka Navy sailor in a mid-sea, midnight clash with Indian fishers. If not handled with utmost care and caution, the new twin-issue can strain bilateral ties, more directly than any other in the post-war past.
N Sathiya Moorthy is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator.
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N. Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst and commentator based in Chennai.
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