Common heritage of mankind is a principle of international law which holds that defined territorial areas and elements of humanity's common heritage that includes both cultural and natural should be held in trust for future generations and be protected from exploitation by individual nation states or corporations. Immanuel Kant in his essay Toward Perpetual Peace claimed that the expansion of hospitality with regard to "use of the right to the earth's surface which belongs to the human race in common" would "finally bring the human race ever closer to a cosmopolitan constitution". The concept of Common Heritage of Mankind, however, was first specifically enunciated in international law in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
Under Customary rules of International Law, the term high seas means, the part of the sea which are not included in the territorial waters. The rule was formulated in 1609 by Grotious in his treatise mare liberum by arguing that the sea cannot be owned. According to him “the sea is one of those things which is not an article of merchandise, and which cannot become private property. Hence it follows, to speak strictly, that no part of the sea can be considered as territory of any people whatsoever.” Later the prominent writers of the 18th century also advocated for the freedom of open seas. The meaning of high seas was transformed into treaty rules in the year 1958, when the Geneva Convention on High Seas was adopted. The article 1 of Geneva Convention on High Seas states that high seas is that part of the sea that are not included in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a state. The regime of high sea has changed considerably under the Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 which lays down under article 86 that all parts of the sea that are not