Conceptions of risk in an institutional context: Deep seabed mining and the international seabed authority

Advances in scientific knowledge have led to competing imageries of the environmental risks and uncertainties associated with deep seabed mining. As the central institution charged with managing deep seabed mining and protecting the marine environment from its adverse impacts, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) provides an institutional platform for the conceptualisation and regulation of those risks and uncertainties. This chapter examines the manner in which environmental risks and uncertainties are conceptualised within the ISA and the processes through which it regulates in the face of uncertainty. In doing so it reveals the extent and the manner in which the existence of an institutional platform affects how the imagined future of perceived economic riches is being balanced against the need to protect an environment about which little is known.