India and Sri Lanka's Deep Sea Mining Deadlock

Read The Diplomat, Know The Asia-Pacific Regional geopolitical tensions and a legal stalemate are constraining both countries’ cobalt ambitions in the Afanasy Nikitin Seamount. Sri Lanka’s strategic location in the Indian Ocean often pulls the country into the geopolitical rivalry between regional giants India and China. In 2023, for example, Sri Lanka’s granting of permission for Chinese research vessels to dock in Sri Lanka’s territorial waters met with strong opposition from India. The tension subsequently resulted in Sri Lanka imposing a one-year moratorium for research vessels from all countries from entering into Sri Lanka’s waters. For India, Chinese research vessels aren’t merely a security threat. India is also concerned about China accessing vast seabed resources in the Indian Ocean. India’s influence on Sri Lanka – being a close ally and the closest neighbor – ensure that Sri Lanka’s effort to access mineral resources on the seafloor is likely to be entangled with geopolitics and regional security. These concerns are already surfacing with Sri Lanka and India’s interests to tap into massive critical mineral resources in the Indian Ocean, especially near the Afanasy Nikitin Seamount (ANS), located 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 length, the ANS is enriched in highly sought-after critical minerals, including cobalt, nickel, and manganese, which are vital for strategic and cutting-edge tech applications like electric vehicle batteries and aerospace technology. Notably, the seamount is located in what are currently considered international waters – but is locked in a maritime dispute involving Sri Lanka and India. For both countries, these critical mineral resources are of high importance. For India, the minerals thought to be located in the ANS, especially cobalt, are crucial to facilitate the country’s green energy transition. For Sri Lanka, the mineral resources in the ANS are important as a potential source of foreign currency. Sri Lanka has been grappling with serious debt troubles and is still recovering from its sovereign default declared in 2022. Even after the debt relief, Sri Lanka’s public debt-to-GDP ratio would remain close to 90 percent, with almost half of it being foreign currency debt. Yet Sri Lanka’s exports – a key source of foreign currency – remain low at 19 percent of GDP in 2025, down sharply from 39 percent in 2000. Sri Lanka, however, just like many Global South countries, does not have the extensive capital or advanced technology required to carry out deep seabed exploration. Whether mining or simply conducting large-scale explorations, deep sea projects require large-scale initial capital investment. The Sri Lankan government, with its high debt burden, is unable to make such investments. The country’s private sector also does not have the capacity to invest in large-scale projects like mining the ANS. This means Sri Lanka would require the support of foreign companies to do any form of critical mineral exploration or mineral processing that requires substantial capital investment upfront. It seems that Sri Lankan government has acknowledged this reality, despite its left-leaning ideology. For example, on June 23, Sri Lanka’s largest private sector group, Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, hosted a Mineral Sands Technical Conference and invited the global private sector to join hands in exploring mineral sands in Sri Lanka. Speaking at the event, Sri Lanka’s Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development Sunil Handunneththi made it clear that the mineral industry is one of focus areas of the government. Its mission is to transform Sri Lanka into a competitive leader in mineral processing and supporting industries, with an eye toward research, innovation, and skilled employment generation. Sri Lanka’s Claim, India’s Pushback While this ambitious plan paints an optimistic picture about promoting Sri Lanka’s critical mineral industry, the reality is more challenging. It’s also intertwined with geopolitics, as is visible in the case of the ANS. The ANS, and its vast unexplored resources, is currently embroiled in a contentious legal dispute. The debate is centred primarily around a legal claim by Sri Lanka on its maritime boundary. In 2009, Sri Lanka filed a claim at the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) to extend its maritime boundary up to 350 nautical miles. The ANS is located approximately 650 nm off Sri Lanka’s southern coast, way beyond the standard 350 nm limit of the extended continental shelf. But in the request Sri Lanka used a specific legal provision – Annex II of the Final Act of the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea – which allows littoral states in the southern parts of the Bay of Bengal, with specific continental shelf conditions, to use an alternative mathematical method to draw their shelf boundary. To invoke the clause, states should have a continental shelf with thick sedimentary deposits lying beneath the continental rise close to the shore. Sri Lanka argued that by applying this method, the outer limit of its maritime jurisdiction extends beyond the 350 nm limit, to a boundary that includes the ANS. Although Sri Lanka’s geological claim remains to be proven, if the CLCS does validate the claim, Sri Lanka’s legally recognized maritime seabed jurisdiction would be extended and the ANS would legally fall under Sri Lanka’s national jurisdiction, preventing other states from exploring the seabed without Sri Lanka’s consent. At the time of the initial CLCS filing in 2009, India did not express any formal objection to Sri Lanka’s claim. But a combination of domestic interests and resource-driven geopolitics shifted India’s stance on the ANS in 2022. In 2021, attending the COP26 summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced India’s goal to cut its emissions to net zero by 2070. The public target increases the demand for clean energy applications such as electric vehicles – in turn driving India’s search for essential minerals, including cobalt. New Delhi’s foreign policy shift was also fueled by China’s growing maritime reconnaissance in the Indian Ocean. China has conducted extensive expeditions in the Indian Ocean through multiple research vessels, which garnered heavy criticism from India and the United States. Several of these vessels, most notably the Chinese research vessel Shi Yan 6, docked in Colombo Port further fueling protest by both international and local actors. As a result, Sri Lanka declared a one-year moratorium on maritime research vessels from all countries from entering its waters, beginning January 1, 2024. The yearlong moratorium concluded by the end of 2024. In its 2022 complaint, India opined that Sri Lanka’s claim prejudiced India’s strategic and economic interests and formally expressed its protest through a note verbale