Frontier disputes in areas such as deep-sea mining, polar resources, shipping routes and space activity will test international law amid rising geopolitical competition, according to panelists at the London Internation Disputes Week 2026 Main Conference on Tuesday (2 June).
Speaking at The ‘Law at the Frontiers’ session, Law Society of England and Wales president and panel moderator Mark Evans questioned whether the current legal foundations governing those domains could “keep pace with the geopolitical and technological change we’re already seeing”.
Toby Fisher, a barrister at Matrix Chambers, said the existing deep seabed regime had been established to prevent areas beyond national jurisdiction becoming a source of conflict. States had agreed that the seabed and its mineral resources should be treated as the “common heritage of humankind”, with exploration and exploitation regulated by the International Seabed Authority.
That settlement, he noted, was under pressure because polymetallic nodules contain cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earths used in energy-transition and critical-minerals strategies, Fisher said.
He described President Trump’s executive order directing the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to fast-track licences for deep-sea mining outside US jurisdiction as a challenge to the common-management regime in Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
“If those US-authorised operations succeed commercially, the common heritage principle may simply collapse,” Fisher said. He added that disputes may centre not only on whether the US is in breach of international law, but on the obligations of UNCLOS states in response.
Alison Macdonald KC, a barrister at Essex Court Chambers, contrasted Antarctica’s “common-heritage-style model” with the Arctic’s stronger emphasis on the law of the sea and coastal-state rights.
The Antarctic Treaty, explained the Essex Court silk, has suspended territorial claims, prohibited military activity and weapons testing, and supported scientific cooperation and inspection rights, she said. However, thinning ice is exposing minerals in Antarctica and may increase pressure for resource activity, potentially presented as scientific research.
Macdonald also pointed to the limits of consensus-based decision-making in environmental protection and fisheries, where parties can veto measures including marine protected areas.
In the Arctic, she said the governance structure had been weakened since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Newly navigable routes, including the Northwest Passage – on which Canada and Greenland have strategic interests – and the Northern Sea Route, could become “potential flashpoints” because of competing claims over internal waters, international straits, fees and militarisation.
Terry McCulley, senior managing director at McLarty, a unit of consulting company Ankura, focused on the consequences for African states when the rules-based international order is challenged.
African countries, he said, often defend an international system whose rules they did not shape, including colonial borders, because they experience the immediate effects when that system is weakened.
McCulley said the war in Ukraine and attacks on freedom of navigation in the Black Sea had affected African food security because of dependence on grain and fertiliser imports. Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz could also raise fuel prices and ripple through African economies, while interruptions to maritime routes may also affect supplies of vaccines and antibiotics.
“International law is heavily dependent on consensus and on states choosing to follow the rules,” McCulley said. “The challenge for the current era is stark: what do you do when a major power is openly intent on not following those rules?”
Rachael O’Grady, a disputes and mining partner at Mayer Brown, said international space law rested on five core treaties, with the Outer Space Treaty as its cornerstone.
Outer space is framed as “the province of all humankind”, with no state able to claim sovereignty through occupation, use or declaration. O’Grady said states remain internationally responsible for national space activities carried out by government agencies or private companies.
That principle will be tested as commercial activity expands and satellite congestion and debris increase. “We are moving from one satellite in 1957 to an estimated 100,000 active satellites by 2030,” she said.
Another contentious issue will be space resources, as states including the US, Luxembourg and the UAE allow private entities to extract and own resources while maintaining that their laws comply with non-appropriation principles.
Evans concluded that international disputes were likely to proliferate across frontier domains, placing lawyers at the centre of efforts to guide states, businesses and individuals through an increasingly contested global order. The debate – and the risks – will continue.
The Global Legal Post is holding a series of roundtable events, in partnership with Ashurst, as part of LIDW26 at Ashurst’s London office on Wednesday 3 June. For more details about the sessions and speaker lineup, visit the LIDW26 event page for sessions on Enforcement of Judgments, Class Actions, Commercial Litigation and Arbitration.
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