Knowing the Deep Seabed: Towards a Just and Inclusive Cartography

There is an unprecedented push to map the earth’s entire ocean floor by the end of 2030. These mapping efforts produce baseline ‘data’ which becomes the basis through which the deep seabed and its resources are known and governed. However, by visualising the world solely through the lens of the environmental and natural sciences, they overlook alternative ways of understanding the seabed and continue the marginalisation of the seabed from social thought. By failing to engage critically with this unique geography, these maps can produce processes of inclusion and exclusion from deep sea politics and shape the international seabed’s legal definition as ‘the common heritage of mankind’. Against this background, this paper argues that the processes for mapping the deep seabed must better highlight and represent its multiple heritages, geographies and worldviews globally. Doing so helps to produce a more just and sophisticated understanding of the deep-seabed at a time when it is emerging as a site of political and economic interest. It can do this in three main ways. First, the environmental knowledge production of the deep seabed must be decolonised. Secondly, it can show how the inclusion of marginalised perspectives can challenge the notion of ‘territory’ and, in doing so, shape discussions around national/global seabed governance. Finally, a decolonial mapping of the seabed can change the way the notion of ‘heritage’ is viewed especially in the context of the international seabed’s legal definition as ‘common heritage of mankind’.