On 11 November 1967, Arvid Pardo, Malta's permanent representative to the United Nations, delivered a lengthy presentation to the First Committee (political and security) of the UN General Assembly. In that presentation, Malta, a small island nation in the Mediterranean, proposed “an effective international regime over the seabed and the ocean floor beyond a clearly defined national jurisdiction (through which) all can receive assurance that at least the deep sea floor will be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and that there will be orderly exploitation of its resources”. He called for “a special agency with adequate powers to administer in the interests of mankind the oceans and the ocean floor beyond national jurisdiction”.

What worried Pardo and Malta most were three trends. One was the rapid development of technology to mine the ocean floor and the soil beneath it, which were outside both national jurisdiction and international control. The combination of technological development and the anarchical state of the oceans, the seabed and its subsoil would cause the gap between the technologically advanced and the rest of the world to widen even more. Another trend was the growing capacity of ever-larger oil tankers and other vessels to pollute the seas and of fishing fleets operating at long distances to deplete fishery resources. The third was the possibility of a militarily advanced nation placing weaponry on the seabed and negating its adversary's secondstrike nuclear capability, the core of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. This would endanger the planet and everyone on it.

This state of near-anarchy arose from the fact that the oceans beyond a narrow band of sea along the coastlines of states, together with their resources in the waters, on the seabed and in its subsoil, were free for use, exploitation or despoliation by others. Shortly after the end of World War II, in September 1945, the United States laid claim to ownership of the natural resources on its continental shelf, “subject to its jurisdiction and control”. Argentina then extended that to include the sea above the continental shelf. Soon afterwards, alarmed by the potential depletion of their fish stocks through the activities of fishing fleets from other continents, several coastal states in Africa led by Kenya and in South America — Chile, Peru and Ecuador, to begin with — asserted their economic rights over a 200-mile maritime zone off their Coasts.